PERSONAL TRAITS OF 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 



PERSONAL TRAITS OF 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 



BY 

HELEN NICOLAY 



' ^%K.^s <^Pi^*l 




*»*%>5^ii5i^ 



NEW YORK 
THE CEx\TURY CO. 

1913 



S0U'^HI^AST■P^^^7 BRAMGH 



Copyright, 1912, by 
The Centuey Co. 



Puhlished, October, 1912 






t-^S? 






UKceu:.-K;, 



DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA PROPERTl 
TRANSFERRED FROM PUBUC PBRARY 

644712 '' 



PREFACE 

WHEN my father began collecting 
material to be used in his joint 
work with John Hay, " Abraham Lincoln : 
A History," he put certain things into an 
envelope marked " Personal Traits," mean- 
ing to make a chapter with that heading. 
As the work grew the items gathered 
under that head overflowed from one 
envelope into many ; and at the same time 
it became manifest that a chapter with 
such a title would be out of place. Inci- 
dents illustrating Mr., Lincoln's personal 
traits found their rightful place elsewhere ; 
and the authors argued that if the work 
as a whole did not reflect his character, it 
was labor lost. 



PREFACE 

The envelopes, bursting with their load, 
were put aside. My father meant at some 
future time, to make of the material thus 
collected, a smaller and more intimate vol- 
ume. More pressing literary tasks, and 
failing health, interfered. 

Unfortunately, first-hand knowledge, 
that could take those miscellaneous notes, 
personal jottings, private letters, and 
newspaper clippings, unrelated as the col- 
ors on a painter's palette, and blend them 
into an absolutely satisfactory portrait, 
is not a kind of knowledge to be in- 
herited — even by a daughter who grew 
up in an atmosphere of devotion to Lin- 
coln, and who, even in childhood was ac- 
corded the privilege of helping, in so far 
as she was able, with the details of the 
" History." 

That experience, however, seems to put 
upon her a certain obligation to use these 



PREFACE 

notes, while it does not lessen her sense of 
the perils of the task. It is a case, indeed, 
where duty and something very like pre- 
sumption go hand in hand. 

She wishes to make acknowledgment to 
Mr. Robert Lincoln for his personal kind- 
ness in help and advice; and also to the 
authors whose painstaking research has 
brought to light new letters and material 
since " Abraham Lincoln : A History," was 
published. 

Washington^ D, C, 
Ma2/ SI, 1912. 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 

I The Man and His Nature ... 3 

II Lincoln's Anecdotes and Similes . 12 

III His Developing Power 36 

IV The Start in Life 63 

V The Eighth Judicial Circuit . , 79 

VI Lincoln's Attitude Toward Money 97 

VII A New Candidate 117 

VIII The Campaign Summer .... 134 

IX The Journey to Washington . . 151 

X EvERY-DAY Life at the White House 173 
XI President Lincoln, His Wife and 

Children 198 

XII Those in Authority 234? 

XIII Daily Receptions of the Plain 

People 257 

XIV The Memorandum of August 

Twenty-Third 289 

XV His Forgiving Spirit 315 

XVI His Reason and His Heart . . . 337 

XVII Lincoln the Writer 359 

XVIII His Moral Fiber 377 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

FACING 
PAGE 

Party accompanying Lincoln on the Journey 
from Springfield to Washington .... 154 

Handbill used on Lincoln's Journey to Wash- 
ington 168 

Autograph Text of Address to Foreign En- 
voys 176 

President's Note about a Post-oflBce Appoint- 
ment, with Montgomery Blair's Endorsement 186 

Two Characteristic Endorsements, and a Call 
to a Special Cabinet Meeting .... 190 

A Presidential Tea Party 206 

Autograph Text of Lincoln's Rebuke to His 
Cabinet 240 

Memorandum across back of which Lincoln 
asked his Cabinet to write their names, but 
whose Contents he did not show them until 
after his reelection 312 



PERSONAL TRAITS OF 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 



PERSONAL TRAITS OF 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 



THE MAN, AND HIS NATURE 

TO make claim of superhuman good- 
ness or wisdom or ability for 
Abraham Lincoln is to belittle him — to 
detract from the dignity of his life and 
the inspiration of his example. The rea- 
son his name is on every lip, and that the 
sound of it warms every heart, is that he 
was so human, yet lived on a higher plane 
than his fellows. That he freed an en- 
slaved race and brought a long and bitter 
war to an end, is impressive, but not vital 
to his greatness. The fact that counts, is 
that he passed through every stage of his 

2 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

marvelous career, from laboring man to 
ruler with more than imperial power, se- 
renely constant to one inflexible standard 
of right — never arrogant and never 
abashed, just in act, and in sympathy a 
brother to mankind. 

Some men, bom with the gift of 
wit, lack judgment, or persistent energy. 
Others, dowered with unusual sagacity, are 
hampered by a cold earnestness which re- 
pels confidence. Still others, afflicted with 
blind unreasoning energy, blunder per- 
petually into destructive acts of courage 
and daring. Lincoln had these qualities in 
happy combination: wit to attract and 
hold men, logical sense and clear vision to 
plan methodical action ; and, best of all, 
that high courage which, when the golden 
moment came, inspired him to bold and 
fearless action, regardless of what others 
thought and careless of consequences to 
himself. 

4 



THE MAN AND HIS NATURE 

To study his character it is not neces- 
sary to dig at the tap-root of his family 
tree. It is unimportant whether his ulti- 
mate ancestor was a baron who lived by 
robbery, or a serf yielding his oppressor 
unwilling tribute of sweat and blood. To 
invent him a proper blazon we need only 
cross the ax of the pioneer with the mace, 
the symbol of delegated authority. In 
blood and brain, ambition and achievement, 
he was one with the men who in a single 
century carried American civilization from 
the slopes of the Alleghanies to the beaches 
of our Pacific coast. His grandfather 
was killed by savages. He himself bore 
arms in the last Indian war of northern 
Illinois. 

Born in a Kentucky log cabin, reared in 
an Indiana frontier settlement, beginning 
life on his own account in an Illinois vil- 
lage scarcely less primitive, he moved with 
the tide of onward progress, not as a piece 
of driftwood helplessly tossed by capri- 

5 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

cious waves, but as the pilot of his self- 
built craft, swayed indeed, now and then, 
by adverse currents, but planning his own 
course, and making port with the precision 
born of rudder and compass. 

In the inscrutable ways of Providence it 
came about that when this man was fifty 
years old his self-made craft became sud- 
denly the ship of State, and his hand on the 
helm the deciding factor in the lives of 
thirty-one millions of his fellow-country- 
men. 

It is not enough to say that only in 
America could such things be. Abraham 
Lincoln is not explained so easily. He 
was not alone the product of a new land, 
but of the ages. Physically a wonderful 
organ, mentally a wonderful instrument, 
he was played upon by all the wonderful 
influences of our new continent — by the 
God-given freshness of the prairies, and 
the mystery of primeval forests shadow- 
ing secrets of an aboriginal race — also 

6 



THE MAN AND HIS NATURE 

by Spartan fortitude, Roman law, and 
Christian charity, gathered in remote days 
by European forebears, and brought across 
the sea to flower in him under the clear 
light of a sun as yet undimmed by the 
miasma of civilization. And with all this 
background it took more than average 
human experiences to make him what he 
became. 

Intellectually his life divides itself into 
three periods. The first, of about forty 
years, beginning in the backwoods cabin, 
ended with the close of his term in Con- 
gress. The second, of about ten years, 
concluded with his nomination to the Presi- 
dency. The third, of about five years, 
terminated at his death. Had he been 
called upon to exercise the duties of Presi- 
dent at the end of the first period, he would 
not have disgraced the office, but the school- 
ing which followed was necessary, even 
with his unusual gifts, to the fulfilment of 
his destiny, and the lasting good of the 

7 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

American people. " First the blade, then 
the ear, then the full corn in the ear." 
His life was an orderly development, each 
achievement preparing the way for the one 
to come. 

In the first period he grew, as hundreds 
of his contemporaries grew, from nothing 
in wisdom and worldly possessions, to an 
honorable place in the material and mental 
life of his time. It y^as the season of his 
personal growth. In the second he put a 
moral question before the people in terms 
so ringing that they had to listen. With- 
out conscious will on his part, but as 
inevitably as the magnet draws to itself a 
following, he became in those years a leader 
of men, merged his individuality in that of 
a cause, and became the champion of a 
great idea. In the third period, when 
events crowded so thickly that the half- 
century he had already lived seemed but a 
short time compared to the days and weeks 
of his Presidency, he was called upon to 

8 



THE MAN AND HIS NATURE 

put his championship to the test — to lead 
his followers through doubt and tribula- 
tion, and finally to lay down his life for the 
faith that was in him. 

History dwells on the fact that this man, 
who began so humbly and traveled so far, 
had only one scant year of schooling; and 
it treasures, rightly enough, a few leaves 
from his copy-book, and one or two doggerel 
verses as precious relics. Of the teachers 
who walked with him all the days of his 
youth, it says little. Yet poverty taught 
him the value of industry, of skill, of repu- 
tation. Labor taught him, better than 
books could do, his individual right to the 
fruits of his individual toil. Another great 
teacher was solitude, in whose still places 
he learned to think — to measure his pow- 
ers, and take counsel of his own mind and 
heart. 

But even taking into account all these, 
we know practically nothing of how he edu- 
cated himself, or why. The force which 

9 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

moves the grain of wheat to activity re- 
mains ever a mystery. We only know that 
a miracle was wrought, and that by the 
time this pioneer boy reached manhood the 
cast of mind as well as of body, the tricks 
of speech, and the spaciousness of soul, 
had developed, that remained with him to 
the end. 

A man of many moods but great single- 
ness of aim, he was complex, yet of a 
strange simplicity. So natural in manner, 
so free from arrogance and assumption of 
power, that some could not see how grandly 
he towered above them. Unable to believe 
that one so placed could have come through 
the fires of life unscathed, they read into 
his acts subtleties and meanings which were 
not there; for, with the knowledge of a 
world-wise man, he kept the heart of 
a child. Humble-minded, he was confident 
of his own powers. Intensely practical, he 
was dowered with a poet's vision, and 
a poet's capacity for pain. Keen, analyt- 
ic 



THE MAN AND HIS NATURE 

ical, absolutely just, he was affectionate — 
and tender-hearted almost to the verge of 
unreason. Fond of merriment, he was one 
of the saddest men who ever lived. 

Some, seeing only one side of his char- 
acter, and some another, doubted and mis- 
judged him. Though those nearest him 
were the ones who loved him best, even they 
hardly realized the measure of his great- 
ness. Time had to demonstrate the con- 
summate wisdom of his acts, truth had to 
unearth hidden facts, and men and women 
who casually judged him and passed on 
had each to bring a little tribute of praise 
or blame before the world could see how the 
varied and apparently contradictory ele- 
ments in Lincoln's nature — sadness and 
gaiety, justice, logic and mercy, humility 
and assurance — combined in one genial, 
luminous whole; just as conflicting colors 
of the spectrum fuse together into strong 
white light. 



11 



II 



Lincoln's anecdotes and similes 



JUST as white light, broken into com- 
ponent parts, dazzles an untrained 
eye with reds and yellows, to the exclusion 
of violets and indigo, without which the 
gaudier colors are only disturbing factors, 
popular estimate has laid too much stress 
on one of the least of Lincoln's qualities — 
his story-telling power; if indeed, it was a 
quality, and not the result of a quality — 
an effect, not a cause. That he was a 
royal story-teller there is no doubt, but 
legend and popular fancy have combined to 
distort the measure and the reason of his 

gift. 

Sorrow and hardship darkened the ear- 

12 



ANECDOTES 

liest years of his childhood, but his was a 
gay and happy nature by right of birth. 
As a boy he loved a story for the pure fun 
in it; and, since he was human, liked to 
tell one, because in those pioneer times of 
few amusements and almost no books, the 
exercise of the faculty carried with it pop- 
ularity, even more than it does to-day. 
yEsop's "Fables," one of the few books 
that fell into his hands, was a mine of 
wealth to such a lad, and a formative in- 
fluence as well. 

Grown to manhood, he faced juries by 
day, or appeared after nightfall before 
scanty groups of settlers, gathered solemn 
and expectant in dimly lighted log cabins 
to hear his views on State politics or Na- 
tional tariff or internal improvement. In 
such conditions the power of a story to 
rivet attention or illuminate the dismal sur- 
roundings was not to be thrown away. 
Later in his career he used anecdotes with 
telling eff'ect to clinch an argument, or 

13 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

good-humoredly turn away a bore. In the 
stress of his Presidency they became abso- 
lutely necessary to tide over the despond- 
ency of bloody, bitter days. 

That he could not have told humorous 
tales with the frequency rumor indicates, is 
self-evident. Had he done so there would 
have been no time to carry on the war. He 
himself disclaimed responsibility for more 
than one-sixth of those attributed to him, 
adding modestly that he was " only a retail 
dealer," who remembered a good story 
when he heard it. In spite of which, most 
of the tales invented since the days of 
Abraham the patriarch have been laid to 
his door. 

The proof of his skill in telling them 
lies in the avidity with which people lis- 
tened for and talked about them, either in 
criticism or praise. For of course there 
were good unimaginative men who could 
not see beyond a story to the application 

14 



ANECDOTES 

of it, and who failed entirely to grasp the 
reason for its telling. To these he seemed 
to be occupying his mind with frothy 
nothings while the country was in extremis 

— a sort of nineteenth-century Nero, with- 
out even the dignity of Nero's music and 
malice. 

Some went so far as to remonstrate with 
him for his levity. They could not see 
that, tortured almost beyond endurance by 
the responsibility and the horror of the 
war, he was telling stories for a purpose 

— reaching out instinctively for some- 
thing to turn the current of his thoughts 
even a moment, in order that he might get 
a firmer grasp again, and a saner outlook 
upon life. 

" If it were not for this occasional vent 
I should die," he told a scandalized and 
protesting congressman. Then, seeing 
that his visitor, who had come on a serious 
errand, was really hurt, he lapsed with 

15 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

characteristic suddenness into his patient 
gravity, and began discussing the matter 
in hand. 

These quick transitions from grave to 
gay were a constant source of wonder to 
his friends. He seemed so possessed with 
merriment while it lasted, and put it 
aside so quickly. Laughter was to him a 
stimulant, and an aid to work. In a lec- 
ture, written years before, he defined it as 
the "joyous, universal evergreen of life." 
An old Springfield friend, hearing it ring 
out in the White House against the lurid 
background of war, called it, with sudden 
deep insight, " the President's life-pre- 
server." 

This laugh of Mr. Lincoln's was one 
secret of his power as a story-teller. His 
own enjoyment was so genuine, his realiza- 
tion of a situation so keen, that it exer- 
cised a power almost hypnotic over his 
hearers. Even the dullest saw the scene 
as he did while he was describing it, his 

16 



ANECDOTES 

expressive face showing every emotion in 
turn. Then when the cHinax was reached 
he would lead the laughter with a hearti- 
ness that seemed to convulse his whole 
body. Yet a moment later the merriment 
died out of his eyes, lines of care descended 
again like a gray veil over his face, and 
sad and weary, he took up his burden. 

Such moments of relaxation were liter- 
ally snatched from toil. No man worked 
harder or had longer hours than he. It 
was the constant endeavor of his secretaries 
to compress his working day within reason- 
able limits — and his constant practice, in 
the kindness of his great heart, to break 
through rules he admitted ought to be 
kept, and to see people morning, noon, and 
night. Importunate visitors sometimes 
forced their way into his very bedroom, 
and neither midnight nor early dawn was 
free from prearranged interviews. Thus 
care was always with him; he was never 
allowed to forget, even had his been a 
2 17 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

nature to forget, that there was a great 
war raging in the land, and that he, more 
than anv one else, was held accountable for 
its course and final outcome. 

Those who heard him tell his stories are 
fast passing away. Which of the many 
attributed to him are of the one-sixth he 
really told, and which of the five-sixths he 
did not tell, is in some cases already im- 
possible to determine. Some are vouched 
for by unimpeachable authority ; some bear 
internal evidence of untruth. Careful 
search has brought to light less than a 
hundred that seem likely to be genuine. 
Even if he told all these and as many more, 
the number would be a small one, to ac- 
count for such a reputation. 

Concerning the quality of his stories, 
certain facts stand out. They were al- 
ways short. Lincoln's worst enemy never 
accused him of telling a long story. And 
they never lacked point. A third charac- 
teristic is that he always took his illustra- 

18 



ANECDOTES 

tions from a life with which he was fa- 
mihar. As he expressed it, he " did not 
care to quarry among the ancients for his 
figures." The hfe in which he grew up, 
the hfe of pioneer times, and of the small 
village communities which immediately fol- 
lowed it in the Middle West, was poor in 
culture and refinements of living, but 
strong in racy human nature. Hence 
overfastidious people, who liked " quarry- 
ing among the ancients," found his stories 
coarse. Homely, would be a truer term, 
for they were never coarse in spirit, even 
when most sordid in detail. Ethically 
they always pointed a clean moral. They 
were of the soil — strongly of the soil — 
but never of the charnel-house. 

His story of the skunks, for example. Is 
the tale of a man who hid behind his wood- 
pile and saw six of these malodorous ani- 
mals walking in procession to deplete his 
hen-house. Firing, he killed one, and 
when upbraided later for not exterminat- 

19 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

ing them all, replied with feeling that he 
had been six weeks getting over the effects 
of shooting that one, and " reckoned he 'd 
let the others go." 

Then there is the story of the louse on 
the man's eyebrow, supposed to have been 
told by Mr. Lincoln to silence a trouble- 
some member of the Illinois legislature who 
questioned the constitutionality of every 
motion made. " Mr. Speaker," said Lin- 
coln, with a quizzical smile, and a twinkle 
in his deep-set eyes, " Mr. Speaker, the ob- 
jection of the Member from So-and-So re- 
minds me of an old friend of mine," and 
to the merriment of his colleagues he went 
on to describe a grizzled frontiersman with 
shaggy overhanging brows, and spec- 
tacles, very like the objecting legislator. 
One morning, on looking out of his cabin 
door the old gentleman thought he saw a 
squirrel frisking on a tree near the house. 
He took down his gun and fired at it, but 
the squirrel paid no attention. Again and 

20 



ANECDOTES 

again he fired, getting more mystified and 
more mortified at eacli failure. After a 
round dozen sliots he threw down the gun, 
muttering tliat there was " something 
wrong with the rifle." 

" Rifle 's all right," declared his son who 
had been watching him. " Rifle 's all 
right, but where 's your squirrel ? " 

" Don't you see him ? " thundered the 
old man, pointing out the exact spot. 

" No, I don't," was the candid answer. 
Then, turning and staring into his father's 
face, the boy broke into a jubilant shout. 
" Now I see your squirrel ! You 've been 
firing at a louse on your eyebrow." 

Certainly the moral of this could not be 
improved upon, however coldly one may re- 
gard the subject. And these two are the 
most violent examples of their class. 

Then there were the stories in which sub- 
jects considered either too sacred or too 
profane were introduced. One described a 
rough frontier cabin, with children running 

21 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

wild, and a hard-worked wife and mother, 
slatternly and unkempt, not overhappy 
perhaps, but with a woman's loyal instinct 
to make the best of things before a stran- 
ger. Into this setting strode an itinerant 
Methodist, unctious and insistent, selling 
Bibles as well as preaching salvation. She 
received him with frontier hospitality, but 
grew restive under questioning she deemed 
intrusive, and finally answered rather 
sharply that of course they owned a Bible. 
He challenged her to produce it. A search 
revealed nothing. The children were 
called to her aid, and at last one of them 
unearthed and held up for inspection a 
few tattered leaves. Protest and re- 
proaches on the part of the visitor, but on 
her own stanch sticking to her colors. 
" She had no idea," she declared, " that 
they were so nearly out." 

Another told of a traveler lost during 
a terrific thunder-storm, blundering and 
floundering along in thick darkness, except 

22 



ANECDOTES 

when vivid lightning flashes showed him 
trees falHng around him, and the heavens 
apparently rent asunder. At last a flash 
and a crash more terrible than all the rest 
brought him to his knees. He was not a 
praying man. His petition was short and 
to the point. " O Lord," he gasped, " if 
it 's all the same to you, please give us a 
little more light and a little less noise ! " 

A third was about building a bridge 
across a very dangerous and rapid river. 
Several engineers had tried and failed, 
when a devout church member told the 
committee in charge that he had a friend 
who could do it. The friend was sum- 
moned. " Can you build this bridge ? " 
they asked him. " Certainly," was the an- 
swer. " I could build a bridge to the in- 
fernal regions." The committee was not 
only skeptical but shocked. After the en- 
gineer had retired his friend said, " I know 

so well, he is so honest and so good 

a builder, that if he says he can build a 

23 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

bridge to Hades, I suppose he can ; but, I 
must say," he added thoughtfully, " I have 
my doubts about the abutments on the in- 
fernal side." 

The twentieth century will regard such 
matters more leniently than the nineteenth ; 
certainly it is hard to see, in the light of 
present-day liberty, how these can be 
classed as license. 

Many of the stories attributed to Lin- 
coln — very likely with reason, since every- 
body tells them — are of the class which, 
through sheer excellence and much repeti- 
tion, has ceased to be personal or even 
national property, and become part of 
the folk-lore of the world. " Swapping 
horses while crossing a stream," is an ex- 
ample. He gave even these his own indi- 
vidual touch. His story of " trying the 
greens on Zerah," with its subtle accusa- 
tion of human nature, was his much more 
artistic version of the usual " try it on the 
dog." As he told it, the scene of the story 

24 



ANECDOTES 

was the neighborhood where he grew up. 
In tlie early spring, after a monotonous 
winter diet, the farmers there were very 
fond of the dish called " greens " — boiled 
dandelion tops, or other harmless wild 
leaves. On one occasion a large and 
greedy family sat down to a very moder- 
ate-sized dish of greens, and Zerah, the 
half-witted boy, whimpered at the unfair 
distribution of the dainty. Shortly after- 
ward the whole household, including him- 
self, became desperately sick, something 
poisonous having been gathered by mis- 
take. All recovered, but the lesson was 
not lost. After that Zerah was invariably 
served first, with his full share, the 
others saying eagerly, " Try it on Zerah ; 
if he stands it, it won't hurt the rest of 
us." 

This is almost the only one of Mr. Lin- 
coln's stories that shows a trace of irony. 
His heart was too sunny, his belief in hu- 
man nature too strong, to permit accusing 

25 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

his fellow men, even in jest, of cruelty or 
meanness. 

Another point is interesting. His 
stories never varied. He always told them 
the same way. Once established, the form 
remained unchanged to the last word and 
expression. Mr. A. J. Conant, who oc- 
cupied a government office in Washington 
during the rebellion, has given us a hint 
of the way in which Mr. Lincoln made a 
story his own. He told the President a 
tale which the latter enjoyed and some- 
times repeated, giving him due credit. 
This, by the way, is not the invariable cus- 
tom of story-tellers. The story was about 
a man who hoped to become county judge, 
and hired a horse and buggy from his 
neighbor, a liveryman, in order to drive to 
the nominating convention held in a town 
some sixteen miles away. He asked the 
livery-stable keeper to give him the best 
and fastest horse he had, explaining that 
he was anxious to get there early and do a 

26 



ANECDOTES 

little log-rolling before the meeting opened. 
His neighbor, being of opposing politics, 
had other views, and furnished him with a 
beast which, though starting out very well, 
broke down utterly. Long before he 
reached his destination the convention had 
adjourned, and of course he lost the nomi- 
nation. Even with its head turned toward 
home the poor horse could not hurry. It 
was late the following afternoon before 
they pulled up in front of the stable. The 
candidate's anger had had time to cool, 
and feeling the uselessness of recrimina- 
tion, he handed the reins over to his 
neighbor, only remarking : " Jones, I 
see you are training this horse for the 
New York market. I know you expect to 
sell him for a good price to an undertaker 
for a hearse-horse." In vain the owner 
protested. "Don't deny it," said the 
would-be judge. " I know it is true. I 
know by his gait how much time you have 
spent training him to go before a hearse. 

27 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

But it is all labor lost, my friend. He will 
never do. He is altogether too slow. He 
could n't get a corpse to the cemetery in 
time for the resurrection ! " 

The words in italics show Mr. Lincoln's 
interpolations. Few as they are, they dis- 
close his quick grasp of the motives of 
both men, and, rendering the story plausi- 
ble, make it twice as amusing. 

But Lincoln's stories might have been 
short and good and dramatically told, and 
forgotten in a day. Their kindhness 
would not have saved them, or their homely 
realism. Their crowning excellence lay in 
being always apt — told not for themselves 
alone, but in illustration of some point he 
saw and wished to make clear to others. 
In that sense they were not stories at all, 
but parables. Their teller would have 
been the first to disclaim any intention of 
preaching. He told them as simply as he 
did everything else in life; but mentally 
and spiritually he was of the line of the 

28 



ANECDOTES 

old Hebrew poets, who had a message to 
deliver, and spoke it with conviction, in 
vivid figures of the life they knew. And 
just because his stories were so apt and so 
wonderfully told, retelling them in print 
after half a century is like wrenching jew- 
els from their setting, or sea growths from 
ocean gardens, or anything supremely fit 
and right in its own place, and displaying 
it mutilated in utterly alien surroundings. 
So short were these stories, and so 
charged with meaning, that anecdote melts 
insensibly into simile. Sometimes it is hard 
to fix the boundary line between them. In 
a letter declining an invitation to a Jeffer- 
son birthday celebration in 1859, he wrote : 
" I remember being once much amused at 
seeing two partially intoxicated men en- 
gaged in a fight with their great-coats on, 
which fight, after a long and rather harm- 
less contest, ended in each having fought 
himself out of his own coat and into that 
of the other. If the two leading parties 

29 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

of this day are really identical with the 
two in the days of Jefferson and Adams, 
they have performed the same feat." Is 
this a story, or a simile? 

Lincoln's early letter to his friend 
Joshua F. Speed, describing his predica- 
ment when he wanted to run for Congress 
and instead found himself sent to the nomi- 
nating convention against his will, in- 
structed to vote for his friend Baker, as 
leaving him "fixed a good deal like a fel- 
low who is made a groomsman to a man that 
has cut him out and is marrying his own 
dear ' gal,' " summed up a drama and a 
political situation in one sentence ; though 
not quite so vividly as did his retort to 
the friend who begged him to interfere in 
the campaign of 1864 when Republicans 
were quarreling among themselves, and 
seemed thereby in danger of losing the elec- 
tion. " I learned a great many years 
ago," was his answer, " that in a fight be- 

30 



ANECDOTES 

tween husband and wife, a third party 
sliould never get between the woman's skil- 
let and the man's ax-helve." 

His mind seemed to translate every sit- 
uation into dramatic form, and he became 
wonderfully adept in setting forth the pic- 
ture he saw in a few swift words. Pages 
of quotation from his letters and daily 
conversation could be made, showing this 
trait. Whether it developed out of his 
story-telling faculty, or side by side with 
it, is a question more interesting than im- 
portant. His answer to the New Salem 
election clerk that he " could make a few 
rabbit tracks " when that worthy inquired 
if he knew how to write, indicates that it 
was of sufficiently early origin ; and in the 
very last public address he made, speaking 
of establishing loyal governments in the 
southern States, he used the figure of the 
fowl and the egg. " Concede that the new 
government of Louisiana is only to what it 

31 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

should be, as the egg is to the fowl," he 
said; "we shall sooner have the fowl by 
hatching the egg than by smashing it." 

" A man watches his pear tree day after 
day, impatient for the ripening of the 
fruit. Let him attempt to force the proc- 
ess, and he may spoil both fruit and tree. 
But let him patiently wait, and the ripe 
pear at length falls into his lap," was his 
illustration of the folly of trying to has- 
ten public opinion. He was speaking of 
the Emancipation Proclamation, as he was 
also when he gave that disconcerting an- 
swer to the committee of Chicago clergy- 
men : " I do not want to issue a document 
that the whole world will see must neces- 
sarily be inoperative, like the Pope's bull 
against the comet ! " 

" I asked him what was his policy," 
said the Prince de Joinville, telling of an 
interview he once had with President Lin- 
coln. " I have none," he replied. " I 
pass my life in preventing the storm from 

32 



ANECDOTES 

blowing down the tent, and I drive in the 
pegs as fast as they are pulled up." 
When emancipation became a " peg," he 
drove it home with great effect. 

" Two dogs that get less eager to fight, 
the nearer they come together," and, 
" fitting the round man into the square 
hole," are similes recorded in the diary of 
Secretary Welles. Lincoln's half-humor- 
ous likening of himself at the beginning of 
his first term, when civil offices had to be 
filled and appointments made, regardless of 
whether war broke out or not, to " a man so 
busy renting rooms in one end of his house 
that he has no time to put out a fire burn- 
ing in the other " ; his discouraged remark 
that sending men to the Army of the Po- 
tomac was like " shoveling fleas across a 
barn floor — half of them never got 
there " ; and his searching question to 
critics who denounced his war methods as 
too severe : " Would you prosecute it in 
future with elder-stalk squirts charged 

3 S« 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

with rose-water ? " are among the most 
graphic. 

In writing to mihtary commanders he 
was constantly using such figures. His 
admonition to " hold on with a bull-dog 
grip and chew and choke," has in it the 
very spirit of dogged fight ; while his warn- 
ing to General Hooker not to get his 
army " entangled upon the river, like an 
ox jumped half over a fence, and liable 
to be torn by dogs front and rear, without 
a fair chance to gore one way or kick the 
other," is as comprehensive as it was sound 
from a military point of view. 

In these, as in his anecdotes, there is a 
noticeable absence of bitterness. After 
Chickamauga he did indeed speak of Rose- 
crans as " confused and stunned, like a 
duck hit on the head," but that was in the 
privacy of the Executive office, to one of 
his confidential secretaries. To the same 
young man he admitted that a high official, 
then plotting against his reelection, would 

34> 



ANECDOTES 

probably, " like the blue-bottle fly, lay eggs 
in ever}^ rotten spot he can find," but in 
public he never admitted that this officer 
was at fault. 

Had Lincoln been of a vindictive tem- 
perament, or possessed of less self-control, 
this dangerous power of using words might 
have brought about his undoing. Had it 
become master of his mind, instead of its 
servant, it could have ridden him far, mak- 
ing enemies at every turn. But his kindly 
nature held it rigorously in check. So 
rigorously that when, tried beyond endur- 
ance, his pent-up feelings did break the 
barrier and find outlet in a stinging phrase, 
it was worse than any blow — as when, 
looking down on the sleeping Army of the 
Potomac, he called it, in sorrow, more than 
in anger, " only McClellan's body-guard." 



35 



Ill 

HIS DEVELOPING POWER 

IN analyzing Lincoln's influence as 
writer and speaker, teacher and neigh- 
bor, it must be conceded that this gift of 
anecdote and simile, this instinct to trans- 
late situations into dramatic form, was a 
tremendous help in getting his views before 
the public in a shape to attract and hold 
attention. Another gift, equally valuable, 
developed later — during the ten years 
preceding his election as President. This 
was his art of compressing a moral truth 
or a guiding principle into one short and 
telling sentence. All three were merely 
different manifestations of his dominant 
mental quality, his strong reasoning power. 

36 



HIS DEVELOPING POWER 

" The point — the power to hurt — of 
all figures lies in the truthfulness of their 
application," he once said, and his faculty 
of picturesque presentation would have 
availed little, had it not been for the clear 
perception which made the figure he used 
the mirror of the fact itself. 

His mind went unerringly to the heart 
of a thing. He saw essentials, and in the 
light of his straightforward gaze non-es- 
sentials shriveled and disappeared. Even 
abstract moral questions, which to others 
might appear nebulous and of uncertain 
outline, had for him definite shape. They 
could be examined from all sides. He 
made up his mind about them only after 
consideration, but they were never misty. 
He might approach them through dark- 
ness, but never through a fog. 

And clear statement of what he saw was 
from boyhood a passion with him. " I re- 
member how, when a mere child, I used to 
get irritated when anybody talked to me 

37 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

in a way I could not understand," he told 
a friend. " I don't think I ever got angry 
at anything else in my life. But that al- 
ways disturbed my temper, and has, ever 
since." He would puzzle far into the 
night over the sayings of men who came 
to talk with his father, lying sleepless until 
he believed he had caught their meaning, 
and then would repeat it over and over in 
simple words, until he was sure he had put 
it in language plain enough for any boy to 
understand. 

In this bit of autobiography he has told 
the secret — as much of the secret as we 
can ever know — of his self -education. 
Given his keen moral perceptions, his pas- 
sion for clear statement, his feeling for 
the beauty of words, and his sense of 
humor, his literary style follows as a mat- 
ter of course. 

Given his clear perception of the thing 
he wanted to do, his direct, simple proc- 
esses of reasoning usually showed him a 

38 



HIS DEVELOPING POWER 

way to do it. The technique might be 
original, but the result was effective and 
satisfactory. Thus, when his flatboat lay 
half submerged over a dam, with its nose 
in mid-air, he freed it from water by the 
simple expedient of boring a hole in its 
bottom. And when his military knowledge 
was not sufficient to get his company of 
Black Hawk volunteers through a gate 
" endwise " in terms prescribed by the 
manual, his common sense prompted him 
to dismiss it " for two minutes, when it will 
fall in again on the other side of the gate." 
Instead of running in grooves hollowed out 
by custom, his mind had the tonic direct- 
ness of a child's. To the day of his death 
he kept the childlike attitude of heart; he 
was never too old to learn. 

No process seemed too tedious or too 
difficult if the end was worth while. 

In answer to a query received during the 
campaign of 1860, he wrote: 



39 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

Yours of the 24th, asking " the best mode 
of obtaining a thorough knowledge of the 
law/' is received. The mode is very simple, 
though laborious and tedious. It is only to 
get the books and read and study them care- 
fully. Begin with Blackstone's " Commen- 
taries," and after reading it carefully 
through, say twice, take up Chitty's " Plead- 
ings," Greenleaf 's " Evidence," and Story's 
" Equity," etc., in succession. Work, work, 
work, is the main thing. 

Yours very truly, A. Lincoln. 

He saw no road to knowledge by way 
of '' six easy lessons." Work, work, work, 
and the use of the faculties with which the 
Lord endowed him, were his means of suc- 
cess. It was after the end of his term in 
Congress that he applied himself with 
dogged energy to mastering the proposi- 
tions of Euclid, because, as he said, he 
was not sure he knew what the word 
" demonstrate " meant. When he thought 

40 



HIS DEVELOPING POWER 

he had found out, he continued the prac- 
tice of the law. 

In the early part of his career politics 
and the law went hand in hand, each help- 
ing on the other. His growing promi- 
nence in politics brought him increased 
law practice, while the practice of law 
sharpened and trained his strong reason- 
ing powers; and both callings carried him 
out among people where his good fellow- 
ship and wit won him hosts of friends. 
The same qualities which made him agree- 
able to his friends made him effective with 
a jury. At first indeed, it was his fair- 
ness and his way of putting things, more 
than deep legal knowledge, which counted 
in the court room ; while in his political ad- 
dresses he was merely talking to a larger 
and more informal jury, using practically 
the same methods, whether he spoke from 
the body of a wagon drawn up in the shade 
of trees, or the less unsteady footing of 

41 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

the court-room floor. It was the taking, 
free-and-easy manner of the Middle West. 
Litigation was not complicated by ab- 
struse points of law; and in politics, cam- 
paign arguments, enlivened by anecdotes, 
good-natured personalities, and pungent 
observations on questions of the day, made 
up the popular speech. 

Major Stuart, Lincoln's first law part- 
ner, did little to foster a closer application 
to study in his friend. He was always 
more interested in politics than in his pro- 
fession. After four years this partner- 
ship came to an end, and another was 
formed with Judge Stephen T. Logan, who 
had lately retired from the circuit bench. 
Judge Logan was a man of more studious 
temperament and of keen legal mind, 
and opened to Lincoln, both by precept 
and example, new vistas of work and 
achievement in the law. These, to his 
partner's delight, and also somewhat to his 
astonishment, Lincoln embraced with ar- 

42 



HIS DEVELOPING POWER 

dor. " He would study out his case, and 
make about as much of it as anybody," 
the judge said, years afterward, with the 
wonder of it still upon him. " His ambi- 
tion as a lawyer increased, he grew con- 
stantly ... he got to be quite a for- 
midable lawyer." After four years of this 
stimulating companionship Judge Logan 
had a son ready to enter the office, and in 
1845 Lincoln made way for him by open- 
ing an office of his own, taking in a young 
and enthusiastic junior partner, Wm. H. 
Herndon, a business connection which re- 
mained unbroken until Lincoln's death. 

Lincoln's election to the Thirtieth Con- 
gress once more enlarged his horizon. 
The two winters he spent in Washington, 
while not adding materially to his local or 
national fame, were of immense benefit in 
his personal development. They gave 
him opportunity to study the complex 
machinery of Federal government, and its 
relation to that of the States at first hand, 

43 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

and, what was quite as Important, a chance 
to measure himself with pohtlcal leaders 
and representative men from all parts of 
the Union. 

The drudgery of congressional life; 
work on committees, and haunting Depart- 
ments to look after the interests of con- 
stituents, no light task in the straggling, 
unpaved, and un-omnltjused Washington 
of the late '40's, did not fill him with 
undue elation. " Being elected to Con- 
gress, though I am very grateful to our 
friends for having done it, has not pleased 
me as much as I expected," he wrote his 
friend Speed; and to his partner he con- 
fessed that speechmaking In the House 
gave him no greater thrill than speaking 
elsewhere. " I was about as badly 
scared, and no worse, as I am when I speak 
in court." That Lincoln habitually suf- 
fered the pangs described by an eloquent 
preacher : " Five minutes before sermon- 
time I would rather be shot than begin ; 

44 



HIS DEVELOPING POWER 

five minutes before time to close, I would 
rather be shot than stop," is unlikely. 
That he could enjoy another's speech we 
have abundant proof. " I just take my 
pen to say that Mr. Stephens of Georgia, 
a little, slim, pale-faced consumptive man, 
with a voice like Logan's, has just con- 
cluded the very best speech of an hour's 
length I ever heard. My old, withered, dry 
eyes are full of tears yet," he wrote to 
Herndon. After this burst of enthusiasm 
it is interesting to read what Stephens 
wrote, years later, about the impression 
made on him at that time by the tall mem- 
ber from Illinois. 

" Mr. Lincoln was careful as to his man- 
ners, awkward in his speech, but was pos- 
sessed of a very strong, clear, vigorous 
mind. He always attracted and riveted 
the attention of the House when he spoke. 
He had no model. He was a man of 
strong convictions, and what Carlyle would 
have called an earnest man. He abounded 

45 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

in anecdote, and socially he always kept 
his company in a roar of laughter." 

Socially, either as member of the 
" mess " at Mrs. Spriggs's boarding-house 
near the Capitol where he lived, or as 
guest at Webster's breakfast parties, Lin- 
coln could hold his own ; and in debate, as 
we have seen, he impressed a man of 
Alexander H. Stephens's brilliant intellect 
as " strong, clear and vigorous." But it 
is significant that after this experience and 
contact with the larger minds of the day, 
he set himself like a schoolboy to study 
works of mathematics and logic. Evi- 
dently, he felt in himself a lack of the 
power of close and sustained reasoning. 

He returned to Springfield at the end of 
his term in Congress, and for four years 
worked hard at the law; the attention he 
bestowed upon it being repaid by increas- 
ing practice, and an ever-growing sense 
of the interest and even the responsibility 
of his calling. His character took on a 

46 



HIS DEVELOPING POWER 

graver dignity during these years, while 
losing nothing in geniality and charm. 
He was still the center of every group he 
joined, and still left behind him a ripple 
of smiles and laughter ; but his friends no- 
ticed that he was less often in their com^ 
pany, and more and more likely to be 
found in the quiet of his own office. The 
very short autobiography written by him 
in 1860 to aid in preparing the campaign 
"life," states that "in 1854 his profes- 
sion had almost superseded the thought of 
politics in his mind when the repeal of the 
Missouri Compromise roused him as he had 
never been before." 

This was the law passed in 1820 by 
which Missouri was allowed to enter the 
Union as a slave State, on condition that 
thereafter slavery was to be prohibited in 
all remaining United States territory lying 
north of latitude of 36° 30', the southern 
boundar3^-lIne of Missouri. 

As a moral question and cause of politi- 
47 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

cal disturbance, slavery was as old as the 
nation. The germ of the Union armies 
came across seas in the cabin of the May- 
fiower, and that of Secession lay in the 
hold of the Dutch slaver which sailed up 
ihe James River in 1619. Slave codes 
and abolition societies were in existence be- 
fore our Constitution. The signers of 
that instrument grappled hopelessly with 
the anomaly of involuntary servitude in a 
country dedicated to freedom; and every 
generation of statesmen since had labored 
in vain to quell the growing agitation. 
Eli Whitney's invention of the cotton-gin 
in 1793 early comphcated the question of 
morals with that of money. From being 
a source of perplexity and some shame to 
the founders of our government it had be- 
come by 1820 a burning sectional issue, 
threatening disruption. The Missouri 
Compromise postponed the final struggle 
forty years, but did not quiet discussion. 
Most of the territory still available for 

48 



HIS DEVELOPING POWER 

making new States lay north of 36° 30', 
and the South did not propose to lose a 
political ascendancy it had long enjoyed. 
Its influence brought about the annexation 
of Texas with the resulting Mexican War, 
as a means of gaining new territory south 
of 36° 30'. This acquisition, however, 
only added fuel to the flame. Compro- 
mises in the Constitution, compromise in 
1820, and sundry other compromises 
agreed upon in 1850 in the deluded hope 
that they would be " final," were of no 
avail. A plague-spot in the body politic, 
it grew steadily, and increased in virulence 
despite all palliative measures, until only 
the surgery of war, and Lincoln's heroic 
measure of emancipation could rid us of 
the disease. 

Lincoln had grown to manhood during 
this time of increasing agitation, on the 
border land between the two systems. He 
had been born in a slave State, and lived, 
both in Indiana and Illinois, in communi- 
4 49 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

ties dominated largely by Kentucky tra- 
ditions. But these early influences did not 
serve to shake his inborn aversion to 
slavery. It was one of the moral ques- 
tions he had never seen through a fog. 
At the age of nineteen, on his first slow 
flatboat voyage down to the " sugar 
coast " of the Mississippi River, he had 
abundant time to observe the unlovely de- 
tails of its practical working, and to de- 
cide that it was bad. The sight of human 
beings chained together " like so many fish 
upon a trot-line," and driven and beaten 
for no fault of their own, made a Whig of 
him, when, an ambitious boy in need of 
friends, he lived in a town where Whig 
doctrines were much in disfavor. As a 
member of the Illinois legislature he had 
prepared a " protest " which only one man 
had the courage to sign with him; and 
during his single term in Congress he voted 
over forty times, in one form or another, 
for the Wilmot Proviso, which sought to 

50 



HIS DEVELOPING POWER 

keep slavery out of the territory acquired 
as a result of the war with Mexico. He had 
also, while in Congress, introduced a bill 
for gradual compensated emancipation of 
the slaves in the District of Columbia. 
He may have thought that all his interests 
now centered in the law; but consciously 
or unconsciously, the subject of slavery 
was always near his heart. 

He believed that though slavery was 
evil, the Federal government had no power 
to abolish it in States where it already ex- 
isted ; but that it did have ample authority 
to exclude it from all United States ter- 
ritories. The Missouri Compromise, while 
not ideal, at least served to confine it 
within fixed geographical bounds. 

The accidents of a senate debate and 
the ambition of Lincoln's fellow-townsman 
suddenly precipitated the repeal of this 
measure upon the country in the innocent 
guise of " a bill to organize the Territory 
of Nebraska." Senator Douglas, to fur- 

51 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

ther his own Presidential aims, adopted 
and advocated it, utterly ignoring his 
previous declaration that the Missouri 
Compromise was " canonized in the hearts 
of the American people as a sacred thing 
which no ruthless hand would ever be reck- 
less enough to disturb," and not only Lin- 
coln, but the whole country was " roused " 
— the South in advocacy of it, the North 
in opposition ; for its effect was to open up 
once again the entire question of slavery 
extension. 

From January to May the battle raged 
in Congress ; and after that, from the day 
the bill finally passed until the fall elec- 
tions were held, acrimonious discussion 
swept the land like a whirlwind. 

For Lincoln the question had a personal 
as well as a moral interest. Senator 
Douglas, its chief advocate, without whose 
support the measure could never have be- 
come a law, was an old acquaintance ; had 
indeed been his political adversary for 

52 



HIS DEVELOPING POWER 

nearly twenty years. Some said that he 
had been his rival in love as well. 

Lincoln took no public part in the dis- 
cussion until September. Meantime he 
was studying the question in all its bear- 
ings, historical, legal and political. Op- 
position newspapers accused him of 
*' mousing about the libraries in the State 
House" — and the charge was perfectly 
true. 

When he did speak it was in a new tone 
of authority. His statements were backed 
by facts, and could be proved by legislative 
documents. There was no lack of force 
in his presentation, but it was done with 
unwonted seriousness. He used fewer 
anecdotes, and cited more history; and 
there was a noticeable absence of the wordy 
fury and explosive epithets characteristic 
of the day. " His speeches at once at- 
tracted a more marked attention than 
they had ever before done," the autobiog- 
raphy continues. " As the canvass pro- 

53 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

ceeded he was drawn to different parts of 
the State. . . . He did not abandon the 
law, but gave his attention by turns to 
that and poHtics. The State agricultural 
fair was at Springfield that year, and 
Douglas was announced to speak there." 

The agitation had already brought the 
Whig and Democratic parties in Illinois 
to the verge of disruption. Douglas had 
been almost mobbed when he appeared in 
Chicago. By common consent political 
leaders hurried to Springfield from all 
parts of the State, and a sort of tourna- 
ment of speech-making took place, lasting 
nearly a week. Douglas made a speech on 
the first day. Next afternoon Lincoln an- 
swered him, speaking for more than three 
hours. Neither speech was reported in 
full, but the newspapers gave much space 
to the meetings. One account of Lincoln's 
speech gives such a graphic picture of the 
scene, that quotation, even of its very bad 
English, may be forgiven. 

54 



HIS DEVELOPING POWER 

This anti-Nebraska speech of Mr. Lin- 
coln's was the profoiindest, in our opinion, 
that he has made in his whole life. He felt 
upon his soul the truths burn which he ut- 
tered, and all present felt that he was true 
to his own soul. His feelings once or twice 
swelled within and came near stifling utter- 
ance, and particularly so when he said that 
the Declaration of Independence taught us 
that " all men are created equal " — that by 
the laws of Nature and Nature's God all men 
were free — that the Nebraska Law chained 
men, and that there was as much difference 
between the glorious truths of the immortal 
Declaration of Independence and the Ne- 
braska Bill as there was between God and 
Mammon. These are his own words. They 
were spoken with emphasis, feeling, and true 
eloquence. ... We only wish others all over 
the State had seen him while uttering these 
truths only as Lincoln can utter a felt and 
deeply felt truth. He quivered with feeling 
and emotion. The whole house was as still 
as death. He attacked the Nebraska Bill 
with unusual warmth and energy, and all felt 

55 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

that a man of strength was its enemy, and that 
he intended to blast it if he could by strong 
and manly efforts. He was most successful. 
The house approved ... by loud and con- 
tinuous huzzas. Women waved their white 
handkerchiefs. . . . Douglas felt the sting. 
He frequently interrupted Mr. Lincoln. . . . 
Mr. Lincoln exhibited Douglas in all the at- 
titudes he could be placed in a friendly de- 
bate. He exhibited the Bill in all its aspects, 
to show its humbuggery and falsehoods, and 
when thus . . . held up to the gaze of the 
vast crowd, a kind of scorn and mockery was 
visible upon the face of the crowd, and upon 
the lips of the most eloquent speaker. . , . 
At the conclusion of this speech every man 
and child felt that it was unanswerable. 

Two weeks later the same champions met 
again, and discussed the same questions at 
Peoria, Illinois. It is said that at the end 
of this debate Senator Douglas sought a 
friendly interview with Lincoln for the 
purpose of obtaining from him an agree- 

56 



HIS DEVELOPING POWER 

ment that neither would speak again in 
pubHc before the election. Douglas had 
good cause to be alarmed at the unexpected 
power developed by his antagonist; all the 
strength Mr. Lincoln displayed in the next 
six years — the eloquence of his " lost " 
speech at Bloomington in 1856, the argu- 
ments used in his joint debates with Doug- 
las in 1858, and the convincing logic of 
his Cooper Institute speech in I860 — 
was foreshadowed in these two discourses. 
With the advent of this new and deeper 
interest in national affairs, and the substi- 
tution of a vital moral principle for the 
party issues and local questions discussed 
in his former campaigns, can be dated the 
change in Lincoln's manner of speaking. 
The best examples of his first style were 
remarkable; witty, trenchant, and ef- 
fective; full of droll illustrations, and not 
lacking in close reasoning. They were 
rattling good stump speeches of the kind 
to win tribute of applause from the other 

57 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

side, however unwilling; summed up in an 
ancient Democrat's exclamation as he beat 
his hands together lustily : " I don't be- 
lieve a darned thing he says, but I can't 
help clapping him — he 's so pat! " 

This now gave way to increased earnest- 
ness, and to a sober presentation of his sub- 
ject, clear in statement, and exact in 
defining the questions at issue: 

" I do not propose to question the pa- 
triotism or to assail the motives of any 
man or class of men, but rather to con- 
fine myself strictly to the naked merits 
of the question. I also wish to be no less 
than national in all the positions I may 
take, and whenever I take ground which 
others have thought, or may think, nar- 
row, sectional and dangerous to the Union, 
I hope to give a reason which will appear 
sufficient, at least to some, why I think 
differently. And, as this subject is no 
other than part and parcel of the larger 
general question of domestic slavery, I wish 

58 



HIS DEVELOPING POWER 

to make and to keep the distinction be- 
tween the existing institution and the ex- 
tension of it, so broad and so clear that 
no honest man can misunderstand me, and 
no dishonest one successfully misrepresent 
me." 

Historical fact and cold logic replaced 
good-natured thrusts at men and events, 
anecdotes gave way to axioms, and illus- 
trations, sparingly used, were, when em- 
ployed at all, forcible rather than humor- 
ous. 

" If you think you can slander a woman 
into loving you, or a man into voting for 
you, try it till you are satisfied." 

" A highwayman holds a pistol to my 
ear and mutters through his teeth, ' Stand 
and deliver, or I shall kill you, and then 
you will be a murderer ! ' " 

" If I saw a venomous snake crawling 
in the road, any man would say I might 
seize the nearest stick and kill it ; but if I 
found that snake in bed with my children, 

59 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

that would be another question. I might 
hurt the children more than the snake, 
and it might bite them." This was used 
to emphasize his point that slavery could 
not be attacked where it already existed. 
" But if there was a bed newly made up, 
to which the children were to be taken, and 
it was proposed to take a batch of young 
snakes and put them there with them, I 
take it no man would say there was any 
question how I ought to decide." And he 
characterized Douglas's policy of letting 
each separate territory settle the moral 
question for itself, as " groping for some 
middle ground between the right and the 
wrong, vain as the search for a man who 
should be neither a living man nor a dead 
man." 

Logic and force, an unassailable array 
of facts presented with great earnestness, 
and infrequent though sometimes grue- 
somely pertinent illustrations, were not, 

60 



HIS DEVELOPING POWER 

however, tlie only elements of strength in 
this second manner of Lincoln's. It was 
at this period that he developed that power 
so noticeable in his later utterances of 
compressing truth into short and ringing 
sentences, which seemed to catch up the 
very spirit of his argument and focus it as 
in a burning glass. 

" No man is good enough to govern an- 
other man without that other's consent," 
he said in one of the earliest of these 
speeches. 

" When the white man governs himself, 
that is self-government; but when he gov- 
erns himself and also governs another man, 
that is more than self-government — that 
is despotism." 

" No man can logically say he does n't 
care whether a wrong is voted up or voted 
down." " He cannot say people have a 
right to do wrong." 

" He who would be no slave must con- 
61 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

sent to have no slave. Those who deny 
freedom to others deserve it not for them- 
selves, and under a just God, cannot long 
retain it." 

" Let us have faith that right makes 
might, and in that faith let us dare to do 
our duty as we understand it." This last 
was the closing exhortation of his Cooper 
Institute speech. 

Battle-cries of his new faith, they were 
charged with an earnestness ten times more 
impressive than the sallies of his earlier 
manner. His own growth, and the maj- 
esty of his theme, were alike apparent. No 
longer merely a clever speaker, talking for 
political ends, he had received his Pente- 
costal touch of flame and become a teacher 
— a leader of men. 



62 



IV 

THE START IN LIFE 

THOUGH we have little to do with 
Lincoln's youth, it is unfair to leave 
it entirely out of the picture, since the 
half-faced camp at Pigeon Cove and the 
settlements in Indiana and Illinois where 
he spent his boyhood left their lasting 
trace on speech and habit. It was a life 
of democratic equality, wherein no man 
was much richer or wiser than his fellows ; 
a life of open air, neighborly helpfulness 
and no shams, In which each Individual 
stood or fell on his own merits. In the 
White House Lincoln continued to measure 
people and things by these unsophisticated 
standards of personal worth and useful- 
ness. 

63 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

" Every man is said to have his pe- 
cuhar ambition. Whether it be true or not, 
I can say, for one, that I have no other 
so great as that of being truly esteemed 
of my fellow men by rendering myself 
worthy of their esteem," he wrote at the 
age of twenty-three, in his first published 
" Address to the Voters of Sangamon 
County." As a summing up of his atti- 
tude toward society it would have been 
equally true on the day of his death. He 
was frankly ambitious, but with a whole- 
some ambition, willing good alike to him- 
self and his neighbor. As a means to that 
end he seized on every chance bit of wis- 
dom that came his way, welcoming it as 
eagerly in the White House as in the mud- 
chinked log cabin, and absorbing it, not 
with a scholar's thirsty love of learning 
for its own sake, but for the purpose it 
might serve later on. 

Although the people among whom his 
youth was passed were unlettered, we are 

64 



THE START IN LIFE 

apt to dwell with undue insistence on the 
intellectual poverty, as we do on the phys- 
ical misery, of those days. In things of 
the spirit and things of the body alike, the 
boy had enough to nourish and stimulate, 
though never enough to surfeit his growing 
need^. If we were to imagine his early 
life an allegorical play, and write down as 
dramatis personce a list of the human be- 
ings and the things that influenced him, it 
might read something like this : 

A Father. 
A Good Woman. 
A Sweetheart. 
A Schoolmaster. 

A Constable who owned a Law Book. 
A Town Drunkard. 
A Bully. 
A Braggart. 
An Indian Chief. 
A Voyage down a Great River. 
A few Good Books. 
5 65 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

His father, although not a worldly suc- 
cess, was a man of good reputation and 
native wit. His stepmother took the boy 
into her big warm heart and gave him in- 
tellectual sympathy as well as physical 
comfort. Sweet Ann Rutledge whose 
early death plunged Lincoln in such grief, 
was a girl of greatest purity and 
charm ; so, in the three nearest relation- 
ships of life, he had the Best the world 
can offer. 

Mentor Graham, the New Salem school- 
master, while not the wisest of his calling, 
was learned enough to help him to a knowl- 
edge of grammar and surveying. Jack 
Kelso, disreputable town drunkard though 
he was, had a love of Shakspere and Burns 
to offset his love of drink. Jack Arm- 
strong, leader of the Clary's Grove rowdies, 
fought Lincoln, felt his strength, and 
loved him, to the lasting good of both. 
Dave Turnham, constable, possibly added 
to the interest of his " Revised Statutes 

66 



THE START IN LIFE 

of Indiana " by the unnecessary ceremony 
with which he surrounded the volume. 
Denton Offut, who bragged and blustered, 
and set Lincoln in the pathway of commer- 
cial venture and heavy debt ; James Gentry, 
local capitalist, whose substance loaded the 
flatboat upon which the future emancipa- 
tor floated down into the heart of slavery ; 
Black Hawk, the defiant old chief, whose 
revolt gave Lincoln his short experience of 
military service; and the chorus of neigh- 
bors and acquaintances w^ho laughed at 
his boyish stories and mock speeches, each 
had a share in building his character. 

As for the few books that fell into his 
hands, blind chance could never have flung 
together a collection so fitted to his future 
needs. The Bible, ^sop's "Fables," 
" Robinson Crusoe," " The Pilgrim's Prog- 
ress," a " History of the United States," 
a " Life of Washington," and Dave Turn- 
ham's cherished copy of the " Revised 
Statutes of Indiana," embracing within its 

67 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

covers the Declaration of Independence, 
the Constitution of the United States, and 
the Ordinance of 1787 with its provision 
excluding slavery from the Northwest Ter- 
ritory. 

In this small but fruitful mine he delved 
to good purpose. He was not abnormal — 
only a normal boy of unusual mental gifts, 
with a fixed purpose to succeed, and 
blessed with a stepmother who systemat- 
ically abetted his efforts at self -improve- 
ment. Even his father, who, owing to the 
family tragedy of old Abraham Lincoln's 
death at the hand of savages, grew up 
" literally without education " and as his 
son tells us, " never did more in the way 
of writing than to bunglingly sign his 
own name," had ambitions for the lad, 
chief of which was that he should learn to 
" cipher clean through the 'rithmetic." 

So, though the path of knowledge 
stopped far short of a college door, it was 
carefully smoothed for him inside his own 

68 



THE START IN LIFE 

home. " We took particular care not to 
disturb him when he was reading," his step- 
mother told a visitor in her old age ; and 
John Hanks, describing their youth to- 
gether, says : " When Abe and I returned 
to the house from work, he would go to 
the cupboard, snatch a piece of corn-bread, 
take a book, sit down, cock his legs up as 
high as his head, and read." Not a grace- 
ful picture, but true to the life, and, as 
we are informed by one who knew him 
well in the White House, a habit that 
stayed with him all his days. " Some of 
his greatest work in later years was done 
in this grotesque Western fashion, ' sitting 
on his shoulder blades.' " 

John Hanks, and Lincoln's stepbrother, 
John D. Johnston, were the ones who might 
have filed objections ; "for this humoring 
must have looked very like favoritism in 
the immunity it gave from household 
chores. However, even they took a pride 
in his " smartness," although without the 

69 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

faintest desire to emulate it, they lived 
and died, untouched by fame. 

Lincoln and Black Hawk, the Indian 
Chief in our imagined list, never met. 
Indeed, Lincoln's soldiering had no mili- 
tary result whatever, and he was the first 
to ridicule it — yet the episode had its 
bearing on his whole career. He once said 
of himself that he was like the Hoosier 
who " reckoned he liked gingerbread better 
and got less of it than any man he knew " ; 
and at the outset of this short campaign a 
particularly sweet bit of " gingerbread " 
came to him in his unexpected election by 
the men of his company to the honorable 
office of captain. " He has not since had 
any success in life which gave him so 
much pleasure," he confessed in middle 
age. Since a certain amount of sweet is 
good for soul as well as body, this 
success did him no harm ; w^hile it was a far 
more important happening of the campaign 
that he should be thrown into the society of 

70 



THE START IN LIFE 

Major John T. Stuart, who was to be his 
first law partner. 

Lincoln's autobiographical notes give, in 
briefest form, the history of the next few 
years. " Returning from the campaign, 
and encouraged by his great popularity 
among his immediate neighbors, he the 
same year ran for the legislature, and 
was beaten — his own precinct, however, 
casting its votes 277 for him and 7 against 
him." " This," he states, " was the only 
time Abraham was ever beaten on a direct 
vote of the people." 

Lincoln was so forgetful of self, that it 
is refreshing occasionally to come across 
perfectly innocent and pardonable traces 
of human vanity. He was justly proud 
of his place in the hearts of the American 
people, and it gave him uncommon satis- 
faction to remember that with the excep- 
tion of this, his earliest venture in politics, 
they never failed him when allowed to ex- 
press their will at first hand. In this case 

71 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

it would have been a miracle had he suc- 
ceeded. He announced his candidacy just 
before starting on the Black Hawk 
campaign, after onl}^ a few months' resi- 
dence in the county, when he was a stranger 
to practically every one outside his own 
precinct, and as he got back from the war 
only ten days before election, he stood 
small chance against men of wider ac- 
quaintance. Two years later, when he 
tried again, the result was different. 

The autobiography continues : " He 
was now without means and out of busi- 
ness, but was anxious to remain with his 
friends who had treated him with so much 
generosity, especially as he had nothing 
elsewhere to go to. He studied what he 
should do — thought of learning the black- 
smith trade — thought of trying to study 
law — rather thought he could not succeed 
at that without a better education. Before 
long, strangely enough, a man offered to 
sell, and did sell, to Abraham and another 

72 



THE START IN LIFE 

as poor as himself an old stock of goods, 
upon credit. They opened as merchants; 
. . . Of course they did nothing but get 
deeper and deeper in debt. He was ap- 
pointed postmaster at New Salem, the of- 
fice being too insignificant to make his 
politics an objection. The store winked 
out. The surveyor of Sangamon offered 
to depute to Abraham that portion of his 
work which was within his part of the 
county. He accepted, procured a compass 
and chain, studied Flint and Gibson a lit- 
tle, and went at it. This procured bread, 
and kept soul and body together. The 
election of 1834 came, and he was then 
elected to the legislature by the highest 
vote cast for any candidate." — Here again 
is the note of pride. — " Major John T. 
Stuart, then in full practice of the law, 
was also elected. During the canvass, in 
a private conversation, he encouraged 
Abraham to study law. After the election 
he borrowed books of Stuart, took them 

73 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

home with him, and went at it in good 
earnest. He studied with nobody. He 
still mixed in the surveying to pay board 
and clothing bills. When the legislature 
met, the law books were dropped, but were 
taken up again at the end of the session. 
He was reelected in 1836, 1838, and 1840. 
In the autumn of 1836 he obtained a law 
license, and on April 15, 1837, removed 
to Springfield and commenced the practice 
— his old friend Stuart taking him into 
partnership." 

This election to the Illinois legislature 
was undoubtedly the great determining 
event in Lincoln's life. Had he lost in- 
stead of won, the world might have gained 
a blacksmith and lost a President. His 
store had just " winked out " ; he was heav- 
ily in debt, and his one unreasonable 
creditor had attached his horse and sur- 
veying instruments for debt, literally 
snatching the bread out of his mouth. The 
four dollars a day which Illinois legislators 

74 



THE START IN LIFE 

then received must have seemed a gift from 
Heaven — as it was a sign to trust to 
instinct and brain instead of muscle for 
his future career. 

Intellectually it removed him at once 
from the dull routine of village life to 
the companionship and rivalry of the keen- 
est intellects gathered from all parts of 
the State. It taxed all his knowledge, and 
confronted him with new and absorbing 
problems. 

But life was still very primitive, and 
in the electioneering tours which were a 
feature of every campaign, social as well 
as political qualifications went far with the 
voters. Candidates were expected to ap- 
pear at all sorts of neighborhood gather- 
ings, and the man who was equally 
equipped to turn the accidents of a horse- 
race or a debate on the tariff to his 
advantage was the man to win. 

Lincoln was in his element on such oc- 
casions. He could reconcile belligerent 

75 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

patriots with a joke ; and in quoit throwing 
or impromptu trials of strength his tact 
and his muscle were equally valuable. 

Sometimes opposing candidates met un- 
expectedly on these tours and spent the 
night under the same farmhouse roof. 
Then it came to a trial of wits. One of 
Lincoln's opponents, but his personal 
friend (as they all were), told how Lincoln 
got the better of him on such an occasion. 
Milking-time came, and the other, anxious 
to array the farmer's wife on his side, 
took stool and pail from her hands and 
went to work, chuckling at the march he 
was stealing. But when he finished, he 
discovered Lincoln leaning over the fence 
in fruitful idleness, deep in conversation 
with the lady ! Then and afterward, Lin- 
coln was preeminently a practical politi- 
cian. 

Not a tricky politician. Principles in- 
variably came first with him. But in all 
that is fair in party warfare, the shaping 

76 



THE START IN LIFE 



^" 



of issues, the choosing of candidates, and 
that intimate knowledge of local leader- 
ship, and drift of feeling, he was a master. 
His retentive memory gave him an unusual 
grasp of political situations, while his com- 
mon sense showed him ways in which to 
deal with them as direct as they were novel. 
Even in the early days of his legislative 
experience his fellow members felt this. 
" We would ride while he would walk, but 
we recognized him as a master of logic." 

His letters on local political topics in 
Illinois are marvels of acumen and detail. 
He had tables of election figures at his 
tongue's end ; but his crowning gift of 
political diagnosis was due to his sympathy, 
strange as that may seem — to his ability 
to imagine himself in the " other fellow's " 
place — which gave him the power to fore- . 
cast with uncanny accuracy what his op- ] 
ponents were likely to do. 

Long after he left the legislature he was 
a welcome guest in its party caucuses. 

77 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

On invitation of some member he would 
enter and take a seat, drawing around his 
shoulders the shawl he sometimes wore, 
cross his long legs, clasp his hands about 
his knees, and listen to what was being 
said. When all had finished, he would 
throw aside the shawl, and rising slowly 
to his full height, would begin: 

" From your talk, I gather the Demo- 
crats will do so and so," stating why he 
thought so. " It seems to me, if I were a 
member of this body, I should do so and 
so to checkmate them " — going on to in- 
dicate the moves for days ahead ; making 
them all so plain that his listeners won- 
dered why they had not seen it that way 
themselves. 



78 



THE EIGHTH JUDICIAL CIRCUIT 

STRAYED OR STOLEN 

From a stable in Springfield on Wednes- 
day, 18th Inst., a large bay horse, star in his 
forehead, plainly marked with harness; sup- 
posed to be eight years old; had been shod 
all around, but is believed to have lost some 
of his shoes, and trots and paces. Any per- 
son who will take up said horse and leave 
information at the Journal Office or with the 
subscriber at New Salem, shall be liberally 
paid for their trouble. 

A. Lincoln. 

THIS was a misfortune indeed, for 
in those days law and politics were 
twin vagabonds, as peripatetic as a ped- 
dler's cart. Candidates pursued votes into 

79 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

remote clearings, and lawyers went about 
their business on horseback. 

The State was divided into large judi- 
cial districts. The Eighth District, for 
instance, in which Lincoln lived, stretched 
from the Illinois River eastward to the 
Indiana line, and almost an equal distance 
north and south. Twice a year the Circuit 
Judge, and such lawyers as happened to 
have cases before him, traveled around the 
circuit, from one county seat to another, 
holding court in each; and since Illinois 
roads were poor at best, and at M^orst were 
seas of pasty black mud, horseback riding 
was the most trustworthy means of loco- 
motion. 

To Lincoln, who loved the open air, and 
contact with people, these long rides, usu- 
ally in congenial company, were very 
pleasant; while to his fellow travelers his 
good spirits and quaint observations were 
a source of endless delight. 

Both bench and bar seem to have re- 
80 



EIGHTH JUDICIAL CIRCUIT 

garded their semi-annual pilgrimages in the 
light of rather gay frolics, echoes of which 
still come down to us, usually with Lincoln 
as the central figure of a jolly group. 
Sometimes he is chuckling over the ways 
of small boys, or the family cares of a 
duck wdth her brood; sometimes laughing 
heartily at the antics of a clothes-line full 
of garments filled out and set dancing by 
the breeze. Occasionally he rides on, 
moody and silent, eyes and brain alike busy 
with things far away. Once he reins in 
his horse suddenly, and turns back half a 
mile to pull an unfortunate pig out of the 
mire. — Not from love of the pig, as he 
informs his companions, but " just to take 
a pain out of his own mind." 

But in spite of his fund of fun and talk 
there was apt to be a serious book in his 
scanty luggage, and his friend Leonard 
Swett tells us that he found time to study 
" to the roots " any question in which he 
was at the moment interested. In after 
6 81 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

years he looked back upon these circuit 
experiences as among the happiest of his 
life. 

" I guess we both wish we were back 
in court trying cases," he said wistfully 
to General Butler. 

The Eighth Judicial Circuit served as 
the setting for many of his anecdotes. It 
was on a stage journey in pursuit of his 
calling that a man offered him a cigar. 
Lincoln refused with polite jocularity, 
saying that he " had no vices." The man 
gave a scornful grunt and smoked in si- 
lence for a time, then blurted out, " It 's 
my experience that men with no vices have 
plaguey few virtues ! " — an observation 
Lincoln cherished and repeated for years. 

His personal habits and tastes being 
of the simplest, the rough quarters and 
often inadequate accommodations did not 
trouble him in the least. His friend Judge 
Davis only saw Lincoln angry once from 
such a cause. That was when they ar- 

82 



EIGHTH JUDICIAL CIRCUIT 

rived cold and wet at an inn late one after- 
noon, to find the landlord absent, and no 
wood cut for a fire. Lincoln threw off 
his coat, seized an ax, and chopped vigor- 
ously for an hour, while the Judge labored 
with wet kindlings. When the landlord 
returned he received a warm but uncomfort- 
able reception. 

Judge Davis took a far keener interest 
in creature comforts than Lincoln, and the 
latter came back from a trip in his com- 
pany, laughing heartily at a retort this 
interest provoked. The Judge recognized 
the difficulty of catering in remote places, 
and remarked on the excellence of the 
beef. "You must have to kill a whole 
critter when you want meat in a place like 
this." 

"Yes," was the landlord's laconic an- 
swer, "we never kill less than a whole 
critter." 

During "Court Week" each little 
county town was galvanized into fic- 

83 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

titlous activity. The Judge, by vir- 
tue of his office, was given the best 
room in the flimsy wooden " hotel " ; 
but being an open-hearted Westerner, 
as well as an instrument of justice, 
shared it with from one to six of his 
lawyer friends. The rest packed them- 
selves into what space was left. At meal 
times the Judge sat at the head of a long 
table around which lawyers, jurors, wit- 
nesses, prisoners out on bail, peddlers, and 
men who cared for the teams, crowded 
in hungry equality. Food, though abun- 
dant, was often so badly prepared that 
only the seasoning of wit and laughter with 
which it was eaten saved the company 
from early and dyspeptic graves. 

After the meal, those not busy in court, 
or in preparing cases for the morrow, ad- 
journed to the public room, or, carrying 
their chairs out on the sidewalk, tilted 
luxuriously back against the hotel, and 
went on swapping stories and chunks of 

84 



EIGHTH JUDICIAL CIRCUIT 

political wisdom ; while the male residents, 
and farmers from the surrounding country, 
strolled up to take part in the symposium. 

Court Week was a political as well as 
a legal event ; for the leading lawyers either 
were, or had recently been, members of the 
legislature, and as such were called upon 
to explain the " loud uninterrupted groan 
of hard times" which newspapers were 
echoing from one end of the continent to 
the other. It behooved a man who wished 
to rise either in law or in politics, to be 
well posted and alert. Lincoln, who was 
witty, and a good talker besides, was sure 
of enthusiastic greetings wherever he went. 
" He brought light with him," says one 
writer. No wonder. He was as ready to 
listen as to talk; never talked about his 
own troubles; and never asked for help, 
though always ready to give it. 

In the court room he strove to divest a 
case of every question except the vital 
one, giving away point after point to his 

85 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

opponent until he came to the one he 
deemed essential, and taking his stand on 
that. " In law it is good policy never to 
plead what you need not, lest you oblige 
yourself to prove what you cannot," was 
one of his maxims. He talked to a jury 
as he spoke to an audience, in a kindly 
direct way, using the subtle flattery of 
making them feel that they themselves were 
really trying the case ; that he was merely 
helping them to formulate what they had 
long believed. He spoke very clearly and 
deliberately, using few gestures, until some 
anecdote became applicable, when he told it 
with rare dramatic force. 

Knowing the necessity of holding atten- 
tion, he employed language so simple that 
the dullest juryman could follow him; 
and for the same reason he rarely spoke 
from notes. " Notes are a bother, taking 
time to make, and more to hunt up after- 
ward," he told a law student ; adding that 
the habit of referring to them was apt to 

86 



EIGHTH JUDICIAL CIRCUIT 

grow upon one, and always tended to tire 
and confuse the listeners. Notes that he 
used in a case involving the pension of a 
bent and crippled widow of a Revolution- 
ary soldier are certainly not prolix enough 
to distract a jury. 

" No contract. — Not professional serv- 
ices. — Unreasonable charge. — Money re- 
tained by Deft not given by Pl'ff. — 
Revolutionary War. — Describe Valley 
Forge privations. — Ice. — Soldier's bleed- 
ing feet. — Pl'fF's husband. — Soldier leav- 
ing home for army. — Skin DefH. — 
Close." 

For the same excellent reason he rarely 
used a Latin word. He felt that the aver- 
age juryman could not follow high-flown 
language in his native tongue, let alone in 
a dead language, and he preferred to talk 
with him, man to man. A colleague who 
relied on different methods once quoted a 
legal maxim and turned to him asking, 
" Is n't that so, Mr. Lincoln? " 

87 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

" If that is Latin, you had better call 
another witness," he answered, with a touch 
of shortness which recalls his confession 
that from childhood it irritated him to hear 
people talk in a way he could not under- 
stand. He had little patience with men 
who obscured, or tried to obscure, their 
own trail. It reminded him, he said, of a 
little Frenchman out West during the 
"winter of the deep snow," whose "legs 
were so short that the seat of his trousers 
rubbed out his footprints as he walked." 

Secretary Usher has said that Lincoln 
belonged to the reasoning class of men. 
" As a lawyer he never claimed everything 
for his client. . . . He was also very 
careful about giving personal offense, and 
if he had something severe to say, he would 
turn to his opponent, or to the person about 
to be referred to, and say, * I don't like to 
use this language,' or, ' I am sorry that I 
have to be hard on that gentleman,' and 
therefore, what he did say, was thrice as ef- 

88 



EIGHTH JUDICIAL CIRCUIT 

fective, and very seldom wounded the per- 
son attacked." 

His way with witnesses was quite mar- 
velous. Even if hostile at the outset, they 
soon came under his spell and ended by 
wanting to please him. A boy who was 
subpoenaed in a case against his uncle, told 
how he went on the stand determined to 
say as little as possible. On learning his 
name Mr. Lincoln began asking questions. 
— "Was he related to his old friend?" 
who happened to be the boy's grandfather. 
The tall lawyer showed such friendly inter- 
est that before he knew it, the little witness 
was pouring out the whole story. He re- 
tired covered with shame, feeling he had 
been most disloyal ; but outside the court- 
room door Lincoln met him, looked at him 
kindly, and stopped to say that he under- 
stood — he knew he had not meant to tes- 
tify against his people, but he had done 
right in telling all he knew, and nobody 
could criticize him for it. " The whole 

89 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

matter was afterwards adjusted," the lit- 
tle story ends, '' but I never forgot his 
friendly and encouraging words at a time 
when I needed sympathy and consolation." 

Lincoln carried his love of fair play into 
every detail of his profession. " Yes," he 
said to a man who sought to retain him in 
a questionable suit. " There is no reason- 
able doubt but that I can gain your case 
for you. I can set a whole neighborhood 
at loggerheads ; I can distress a widowed 
mother and her six fatherless children, and 
thereby gain for you six hundred dollars, 
which rightfully belongs, it appears to me, 
as much to them as it does to you. I shall 
not take your case, but I will give you a 
little advice for nothing. You seem a 
sprightly energetic man. I would advise 
you to try your hand at making six hun- 
dred dollars in some other way." 

After Lincoln's death some notes, evi- 
dently intended for a lecture to law stu- 
dents, were found among his papers. 

90 



EIGHTH JUDICIAL CIRCUIT 

" Discourage litigation," said one of these. 
" Persuade your neighbors to compromise 
whenever you can. Point out to them how 
the nominal winner is often a real loser — 
in fees, expenses, and waste of time. As a 
peacemaker the lawyer has a superior op- 
portunity of being a good man. There 
will still be business enough." 

Yet he occasionally allowed himself the 
luxury of offering his services. In the 
Armstrong murder trial, the most dramatic 
of all his cases, he defended the accused for 
the love he bore his parents — a friendship 
dating from the day Jack Armstrong, the 
bully of Clary's Grove, fought the tall 
stranger who had come to live in New 
Salem, and felt his strength. 

Joseph Jefferson, writing of his child- 
hood, tells how in 18S9 his father went to 
Springfield, and relying on the patronage 
of the legislature, prepared to stay all 
winter. He built a little wooden theater, 
but scarcely was it opened, when a revival 

91 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

began in town, and excited church members 
had the poor httle playhouse taxed out of 
existence. " In the midst of our trouble a 
young lawyer called upon the management. 
He had heard of the injustice, and offered, 
if they would place the matter in his hands, 
to have the license taken off, declaring that 
he only desired to see fair play, and would 
accept no fee, whether he failed or suc- 
ceeded." 

When the matter came to a hearing he 
made an elaborate argument, covering the 
history of acting from antiquity down, 
handling his subject — and his town coun- 
cil — with such skill that the tax was re- 
moved. Lincoln was fond of the play, and 
his championship loses nothing in human 
interest from the fact that these were prob- 
ably the first good actors it had been his 
fortune to see ; and that he anticipated a 
world of delight within its walls if the little 
wooden theater was allowed to remain. 

Judge David Davis, speaking of Lin- 
92 



EIGHTH JUDICIAL CIRCUIT 

coin's rank as a lawyer, says : " In all the 
elements that constitute the great lawyer he 
had few equals. ... He seized the strong 
points of a cause, and presented them with 
clearness and great compactness. His 
mind was logical and direct, and he did not 
indulge in extraneous discussion. General- 
ities and platitudes had no charms for him. 
An unfailing vein of humor never deserted 
him ; and he was able to claim the attention 
of court and jury when the cause was the 
most uninteresting, by the appropriate- 
ness of his anecdotes." An Eastern lawyer 
once expressed the opinion that Lincoln was 
wasting his time in telling stories to a jury. 
" Don't lay that flattering unction to your 
soul," was his friend's rejoinder. "Lin- 
coln is like Tansey's horse, he ' breaks to 
win.' " 

" The framework of his mental and 
moral being was honesty," Judge Davis 
continues, " and a wrong cause was poorly 
defended by him. The ability which some 

93 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

eminent lawyers possess, of explaining 
away the bad points of a cause by ingenious 
sophistry, was denied him. In order to 
bring into full activity his great powers, it 
was necessary that he should be convinced 
of the right and justice of the matter which 
he advocated. When so convinced, whether 
the matter was great or small, he was usu- 
ally successful." 

" There is a vague popular belief that 
lawyers are necessarily dishonest," Lincoln 
wrote in his notes for a law lecture. " I 
say vague, because when we consider to 
what extent confidence and honors are re- 
posed in and conferred upon lawyers by the 
people, it appears improbable that their 
impression of dishonesty is very distinct 
and vivid. Yet the impression is common, 
almost universal. Let no young man 
choosing the law for a calling for a moment 
yield to the popular belief — resolve to be 
honest at all events; and if in your own 
judgment you cannot be an honest lawyer, 

94 



EIGHTH JUDICIAL CIRCUIT 

resolve to be honest without being a law- 
yer. Choose some other occupation, 
rather than the one in the choosing of 
which you do, in advance, consent to be a 
knave.'* 

He never took a case which appeared to 
him unjust, and if he found out that he 
had been mistaken, it was only with the 
greatest effort that he could make himself 
go on with it. 

" Swett," he exclaimed on one occasion, 
turning to his associate, " the man is guilty. 
You defend him. I can't." Another time 
he said to the lawyer engaged with him, 
" If you can say>anything for the man, do 
it. If I attempt it the jury will see that I 
think he is guilty and convict him." On 
still another occasion, being suddenly con- 
fronted with proof that his client was at- 
tempting fraud, he walked out of the court 
room and went to his hotel in deep disgust. 
The Judge sent a messenger to request his 
return. He refused. 

95 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

"Tell the Judge," he said, "that my 
hands are dirty. I came over to wash 
them." 

" Perversely honest " was the verdict, 
half resentful, and wholly admiring, passed 
upon him by his fellow lawyers. 



96 



VI 

Lincoln's attitude toward money 

PAINFULLY honest, also he was in 
money matters. Tradition has it 
that his initial experience in the value of 
money lay in being made to pull fodder 
three whole days at twenty-five cents a 
dav, to pay for a rain-soaked volume. He 
had borrowed the book. It got wet. He 
payed the price of carelessness in back- 
breaking toil ; but after that the book was 
his very own. " This is a world of com- 
pensation," as he wrote some forty years 
later. 

He told Secretary Seward that he 
earned his first dollar by taking two trav- 
elers and their luggage out from the river 
7 97 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

edge to a steamboat which stopped for 
them, Western fashion, in midstream. For 
this service each man threw a silver half- 
dollar into the bottom of the boat, where 
they shone very large and fair as he rowed 
ashore. 

The frontier value of money differed 
from ours. As a symbol it meant more, as 
a commodity, less. It stood for the world 
the pioneer had left behind him, and all he 
wished to gain, but its momentary purchas- 
ing power was strangely limited. A rifle 
and a strong right arm could supply more 
of his immediate needs than any amount of 
gold. 

This fostered an undefined feeling that 
money was after all a fantastic, rather than 
a real thing, and accounts for certain loose 
ideas about money obligations which pre- 
vailed. For instance, in the burst of confi- 
dence and exchange of promissory notes 
which inaugurated Lincoln's venture as a 
merchant, not a cent of money saw the 

98 



ATTITUDE TOWARD MONEY 

light, though signatures and I. O. U.'s were 
dealt around among half a dozen men, like a 
hand at cards. Death, drink, and defalca- 
tion cast their consuming blight on all the 
other parties to the transaction, and the 
whole indebtedness, amounting to six or 
seven hundred dollars, came finally to rest 
upon Lincoln's shoulders. Instead of fol- 
lowing the prevailing fashion, taking to his 
heels, or claiming that failure wiped out the 
debt, he assumed the load, promising to pay 
when he could. 

His neighbors, remembering how he had 
tramped miles to make restitution of six 
and a quarter cents, and had pursued a cus- 
tomer with a few ounces of tea after inad- 
vertently giving short measure, felt that he 
took money obligations with sufficient seri- 
ousness, and agreed to wait. Seventeen 
years later, long after " Honest Old Abe " 
had become a household word in all Sanga- 
mon County, he paid the last fraction of 
what he called his " National Debt." 

99 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

The two pieces of good fortune men- 
tioned in his autobiography, being made 
deputy surveyor of Sangamon County, and 
postmaster of New Salem, happened provi- 
dentially at this time. Both were tributes 
to his personal worth, not to his politics, for 
John Calhoun, the surveyor, was an ardent 
Democrat, and New Salem, except when 
Lincoln was running for the legislature, 
voted systematically against the Whigs. 

The only obstacle to his becoming Cal- 
houn's deputy lay in his abysmal ignorance 
of surveying — a detail which Calhoun 
promptly overcame by lending him a text- 
book, which he as promptly took to his 
schoolmaster friend Mentor Graham. Six 
weeks later, haggard from application, but 
equipped for his new duties, he presented 
himself again before Calhoun. 

He was made postmaster in May, 1833, 
and kept the situation about three years, 
until New Salem's population shrank to 
such insignificance that a postmaster was a 

100 



ATTITUDE TOWARD MONEY 

needless luxury. Popular fable locates the 
office " in his hat." Its principal perqui- 
site was the privilege of reading the news- 
papers addressed to it — newspapers filled 
at that time with the debates of Webster, 
and Lincoln's boyhood idol, Henry Clay. 

With postage at twenty-five cents, a lit- 
tle actual cash also passed through his 
hands, and this must have been gratifying 
in his state of poverty, even though it be- 
longed to the Government. How sharp a 
line he drew between Government property 
and his own came to light a number of 
years later, when an agent of the Postoffice 
Department called on him in Springfield to 
ask for a balance of about seventeen dollars 
due from the defunct New Salem office. 
After an instant's hesitation he rose, and 
going to a little trunk in a corner, took 
from it a cotton cloth in which the exact 
sum was tied up. A friend who saw his 
face as the agent made his request, had 
hastily offered a loan. " I never use any 

101 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

man's money but my own," Lincoln said 
quietly, after the officer took his departure. 

That he had kept it through all those 
years of poverty, tied up in the quaint little 
driginal package, was profoundly charac- 
teristic. His methods of dealing with cash 
were as simple as his honesty was strict. 
In his lawyer days he wrote, " This is 
Herndon's half," in his careful legible hand 
upon an envelope and put into it one part 
of a joint fee, while the other went into his 
own pocket. That was all he felt called 
upon to do. The firm, of course, kept 
books, but he was rarely moved to make an 
entry in them. When his inconvenient 
sense of honesty rendered it impossible for 
him to go on with a case, the other " half " 
followed the first into his partner's en- 
velope. 

Judge Davis wrote of him : " To his 
honor be it said, that he never took from a 
client, even when his cause was gained, more 
than he thought the services were worth and 

102 



ATTITUDE TOWARD MONEY 

the client could reasonably afford to pay. 
The people where he practised law were not 
rich, and his charges were always small. 
When he was elected President, I question 
whether there was a lawyer in the circuit, 
who had been at the bar so long a time, 
whose means were not larger. It did not 
seem to be one of the purposes of his life to 
accumulate a fortune. In fact, outside of 
his profession, he had no knowledge of the 
way to make money, and he never even at- 
tempted it." 

" You are pauperizing this court," 
Judge Davis used to tell him. " You are 
ruining your fellows. Unless you quit this 
ridiculous policy we shall all have to go to 
farming." But Lincoln went on serenely 
charging as he saw fit. Once his bill was 
$3.50 for collecting a note of nearly $600 ; 
but politics and professional courtesy were 
involved, and another man made the actual 
collection. A chent who owed him for pro- 
fessional services met with financial re- 

103 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

verses, and soon after lost his hand. Lin- 
coln returned his note, saying, " If you had 
the money I would not take it." 

The largest fee he ever received was in 
the contest between the Illinois Central 
Railroad and McLean County over certain 
taxes alleged to be due from the railroad. 
After litigation covering two years Lincoln 
won the case. He presented a bill for 
$2,000 which the railroad refused to pay 
on the ground that it was excessive. 
Whereupon half a dozen of his lawyer 
friends signed a statement that in their 
opinion $5,000 would be a moderate 
charge; and he sued the railroad for that 
sum and got it. The story that George B. 
McClellan was the man who refused the 
original bill with the slighting remark, 
" That is as much as a first-class lawyer 
would have charged," is manifestly untrue, 
since McClellan was not an officer of the 
road, and not even in this country at the 

104 



ATTITUDE TOWARD MONEY 

time. Parenthetically it is interesting to 
be told by competent authority that the 
same services would now command a fee of 
$50,000. 

In the McCormick Reaper case, about 
which much has been written to explain and 
recount his first rather unfortunate meet- 
ing with Edwin M. Stanton, the fee was 
about $2,000. Both of these, coming to 
him near the time of his joint debate with 
Douglas, helped tide over that period of in- 
creasing fame and decreased earnings. In 
the decade between 1850 and 1860 his in- 
come is said to have rarely reached $3,000 
a year. Before that time it was very much 
less. 

" The matter of fees Is Important," he 
wrote in his notes for a law lecture, " far 
beyond the mere question of bread and but- 
ter involved." It was their moral impor- 
tance he had in mind. " Properly attended 
to, fuller justice is done to both lawyer and 

105 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

client." In his theory of money, as in his 
theory of hfe, honesty was paramount. 

" Don't you think I have honestly earned 
twenty-five dollars ? " he asked the pair of 
opposing lawyers who were to fix the 
amount of the fee in a case which had gone 
against him. They expected to allow him 
at least one hundred. 

As Judge Davis said, it did not seem to 
be one of the purposes of his life to accu- 
mulate a fortune. He said that a house in 
Springfield, such as he owned, and twenty 
thousand dollars, which he hoped to earn 
before his working days were over, were 
" all that a man ought to want." 

But he had no patience with the sin of 
shiftlessness, no matter how patient he 
might be with the sinner. His letters to his 
stepbrother, John D. Johnston, who was 
born with a genius for remaining in debt, 
and was always asking help, were as un- 
compromisingly truthful as they were gen- 
erous. In one of them he wrote: 

106 



ATTITUDE TOWARD MONEY 

Your request for eighty dollars I do not 
think it best to comply with now. At the 
various times when I have helped you a little 
you have said to me, * We can get along very 
well now ' ; but in a very short time I find 
you in the same difficulty again. Now, this 
can only happen by some defect in your con- 
duct. What that defect is, I think I know. 
You are not lazy, and still you are an idler. 
I doubt whether, since I saw you, you have 
done a good whole day's work, in any one 
day. You do not very much dislike to work, 
and still you do not work much, merely be- 
cause it does not seem to you that you could 
get much for it. This habit of uselessly 
wasting time is the whole difficulty; it is 
vastly important to you, and still more so to 
your children, that you should break the 
habit. . . . You are now in need of some 
money; and what I propose is, that you shall 
go to work, ' tooth and nail ' for somebody 
who will give you money for it. Let father 
and your boys take charge of your things at 
home, prepare for a crop and make the crop, 
and you go to work for the best money wages, 

107 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

or in discharge of any debt you owe, that 
you can get; and, to secure you a fair re- 
ward for your labor, I now promise you, that 
for every dollar you will, between this and 
the first of May, get for your own labor, either 
in money or as your own indebtedness, I will 
give you one other dollar. By this, if you 
hire yourself at ten dollars a month, from 
me you will get ten more, making twenty 
dollars a month for your work. In this I do 
not mean you shall go oif to St. Louis, or 
the lead mines, or the gold mines in Cali- 
fornia, but I mean for you to go at it for 
the best wages you can get close to home in 
Coles County. Now if you will do this you 
will soon be out of debt, and, what is better, 
you will have a habit that will keep you from 
getting in debt again. But, if I should now 
clear you out of debt, next year you would be 
just as deep in as ever. You say you would 
almost give your place in Heaven for seventy 
or eighty dollars. Then you value your place 
in Heaven very cheap, for I am sure you 
can, with the offer I make, get the seventy 
or eighty dollars for four or five months' 

108 



ATTITUDE TOWARD MONEY 

work. You say if I will furnish you the 
money you will deed me the land, and, if you 
don't pay the money back, you will deliver 
possession. Nonsense! If you can't now 
live with the land, how will you then live 
without it? You have always been kind to 
me, and I do not mean to be unkind to you. 
On the contrary, if you will but follow my 
advice, you will find it worth more than 
eighty times eighty dollars to you. 

He watched over and cared for the inter- 
ests of his father and stepmother with the 
same spirit, and against similar discourag- 
ing odds ; and as he grew in fame, not only 
family letters, ill-spelt, and more fluent 
than logical, but letters from old neighbors, 
breathing patriotism and incompetence, 
came with their pleas for aid, and were met 
in his old neighborly fashion. Here is one 
message which he sent out into the world : 

My old friend Henry Chew, the bearer of 
this, is in a strait for some furniture to com- 
mence housekeeping. If any person will 

109 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

furnish him twenty-five dollars worth, and he 
does not pay for it by the 1st of January 
next, I will. A. Lincoln. 

He did. But sometimes bread cast 
upon the waters returned in its original 
form. An express company's envelope 
was found among his papers, bearing this 
endorsement : 

September 25, 1858. 

This brought me fifteen dollars without 
any intimation as to where it came from. It 
probably came from Mr. Patterson, to whom 
I loaned this amount a few days ago. 

Lincoln. 

During his service in the legislature his 
campaign expenses were small enough to 
satisfy the most exacting. On one occa- 
sion the Whigs contributed the sum of $200 
toward his personal expenses. At the end 
of the canvass he handed his friend Joshua 
F. Speed $199.25 with the request that it 
be returned to the subscribers. " I did not 

110 



ATTITUDE TOWARD MONEY 

need the money," he said. " I made the 
canvass on my own horse ; my entertain- 
ment, being at the houses of friends, cost 
me nothing, and my only outlay was sev- 
enty-five cents for a barrel of cider which 
some farm-hands insisted I should treat 
them to." 

Railroad passes were not regarded with 
the same covetous suspicion, then as now, 
and an amusing note shows his most origi- 
nal way of asking for a renewal. 

Springfield, III.^ Feb. 13, 1836. 

R. P. Morgan, Esq. 

Dear Sir: Says Tom to John, "Here's 
your old rotten wheelbarrow. I 've broke it, 
iisen *on it. I wish you would mend it, 'case 
I shall want to borrow it this afternoon." 

Acting on this precedent, I say, " Here 's 
your old ' chalked hat.* I wish you would 
take it and send me a new one, 'case I shall 
want to use it the first of March." 

Yours truly, 

A. Lincoln. 
Ill 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

A letter to his friend N. B. Judd, writ- 
ten shortly after Douglas's victory, reveals 
the fact that his private subscription to 
the Republican campaign fund in 1858 was 
$500. Unlike Douglas, he paid his own 
ordinary expenses during the canvass, 
" Which, being added to my loss of time 
and business, bears pretty heavily upon one 
no better off in this world's goods than I; 
but as I had the post of honor, it is not for 
me to be over-nice." 

He was bitterly attacked by the New 
York Herald for accepting a check for 
$200 for the famous Cooper Institute 
speech. No public notice was taken of it, 
but he was sufficiently distressed to write a 
private letter denying that he ever charged 
anything for a political speech in his life, 
and giving the full history of the half 
truth on which the accusation was based. 

Having simple tastes, he managed to 
save something from his official salary, 
which few Presidents have been able to do ; 

112 



ATTITUDE TOWARD MONEY 

but this was not by virtue of changing any 
of his habits in regard to money getting or 
giving. The cashier of one of the Wash- 
ington banks, meeting an old friend of Mr. 
Lincoln's on the street one morning, re- 
marked " that President of ytfUrs is the 
oddest man alive. Why, he endorses notes 
for niggers ! " 

At the time Lincoln entered the White 
House, Government credit was at a peril- 
ously low ebb. Buchanan's last two Secre- 
taries of the Treasury found difficulty in 
borrowing even small sums at high interest 
to meet Government expenses. The Civil 
War immediately created new and insistent 
demands upon the Treasury, which ex- 
panded as the months went by into financial 
operations greater than ever before re- 
corded. Lincoln's crystalline simplicity in 
money matters seemed hardly fitted to cope 
with such a situation ; nor did his choice of 
his Presidential rival, Salmon P. Chase, a 
man of little previous financial experience, 
8 113 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

for Secretary of the Treasury, seem neces- 
sarily reassuring. But the good genius 
which watches over our country was never 
more active. This is not the place to re- 
capitulate Secretary Chase's resourceful 
and masterly skill in upholding our credit 
at home and abroad; a management which 
Evarts called " the marvel of Europe and 
the admiration of our own people." 

Lincoln, realizing the worth of Mr. 
Chase's services, as well as his own inex- 
perience, exercised less constant supervision 
over the Treasury than over some of the 
other departments. He made occasional 
suggestions, but did not insist upon them ; 
and when Mr. Chase needed the weight of 
his assistance with Congress, either in mes- 
sages, or in conversation with individuals, 
gave it effectively and ungrudgingly. 

In the fight to make paper money legal 
tender both men advocated it as a measure 
of necessity, not choice ; and worked for it 
with unwearying devotion. A paragraph 

114 



ATTITUDE TOWARD MONEY 

in John Hay's diary quotes Lincoln as 
saying that he " thought Chase's banking 
system rested on a sound basis of princi- 
ple ; that is, causing the capital of the coun- 
try to become interested in the sustaining of 
the national credit. That was the princi- 
pal financial measure of Mr. Chase in which 
he (Lincoln) had taken an especial inter- 
est." 

The two were officially in perfect accord, 
but politically Chase was ambitious on his 
own account, and personally he could never 
understand his chief, whose whimsical re- 
marks and Western ways seemed to him dis- 
tressingly undignified. 

Mr. Chase came to him one day with a 
report on the vast sums of paper currency 
already issued, and the sums still needed 
to pay the soldiers and carry on the Gov- 
ernment. At the end of the dismal recital 
he stopped as if to say, " What can be 
done about it? " Lincoln with a flicker of 
perplexity, and another of amusement 

115 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

crossing his sad face, looked down on his 
shorter companion and answered, " Well, 
Mr. Secretary, I don't know, unless you 
give your paper mill another turn." At 
which levity Chase almost swore, and de- 
parted in high dudgeon. 



116 



VII 

A NEW CANDIDATE 

JOHN HAY'S first recollection of Lin- 
coln was of seeing him hurry into the 
office of his uncle, IMIlton Hay, waving a 
newspaper, and fairly quivering with ex- 
citement as he exclaimed, " This will never 
do ! Douglas treats it as a matter of in- 
difference, morally, whether slavery is voted 
down or voted up. I tell you it will never 
do!" 

For twenty years he and Douglas had 
been acquaintances and opponents. He 
was fully aware of the effective but not al- 
ways scrupulous methods by which Doug- 
las had distanced him in fame and fortune, 
using office after office as stepping-stones 

117 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

toward the goal of his ambition, the Presi- 
dency. Personally their relations were of a 
neighborly, half-familiar, wholly super- 
ficial sort. " I would not behave as well 
as you will have to now, for twice the 
money," Lincoln had told him when Doug- 
las was made judge of the Illinois Supreme 
Court, as the result of a rather questionable 
political manoeuver. 

Lincoln knew him to be not only a wily 
and astute politician, but a master-juggler 
with words, who could, by mere eloquent 
bullying, hypnotize his audiences into be- 
lieving that black was, if not white, a very 
tender gray. 

Ever since Lincoln's reentrance into pol- 
itics it had been a foregone conclusion that 
he would contest Douglas's reelection in 
1858, and it must be his business in this 
campaign to point out the difference be- 
tween white and gray of any kind. 

Douglas had returned to Illinois with a 
quarrel with President Buchanan on his 

118 



ANEW CANDIDATE 

hands in addition to his senatorial fight. 
He had staked his pohtical future on his 
theory of Popular Sovereignty, while the 
administration had advanced far beyond 
that ground, and now proposed to adopt the 
Lecompton Constitution and make Kansas 
a slave State whether it would or no. This 
quarrel, added to his fame as a speaker, 
drew such crowds to his meetings that mere 
numbers and enthusiasm seemed likely to 
drown all intelligent discussion. It was to 
offset this that Lincoln sent Douglas his 
challenge to joint debate. 

Mr. Norman B. Judd, who carried his 
note to Douglas, once told my father that 
Lincoln asked his advice about sending the 
challenge, but did it in such a way that 
Mr. Judd saw his mind was fully made up. 
Mr. Judd therefore told him he thought it 
would be a good thing. " He then sat 
down in my office and wrote that note," Mr. 
Judd continued. " After I got the note I 
had very hard work to find Douglas. I 

119 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

hunted for him for three days before I got 
a chance to present it to him. When I did 
so finally it made him very angry ; so much 
so that he almost insulted me. ' What do 
you come to me with a thing like this for ? ' 
he asked, and indulged in other equally ill- 
tempered remarks." 

But to refuse would mean instant loss of 
prestige, and he named the seven towns of 
Ottowa, Freeport, Jonesboro', Charleston, 
Galesburg, Quincy, and Alton, and dates 
extending through August, September, and 
October, as places and times of meeting. 

The Democrats jubilantly predicted an 
easy victory. Lincoln's friends, on the 
other hand, were not altogether sanguine, 
and not a few Republicans of national rep- 
utation, like Horace Greeley of the New 
York Tribune, openly favored Douglas's 
reelection, on the ground that his quarrel 
with the administration was only a first step 
toward complete political regeneration. 

Lincoln was sensitive to this undercur- 
120 



A NEW CANDIDATE 

rent. It pained him that his local party 
friends doubted him, and it pained him still 
more that men of prominence were willing 
to jeopardize a principle for the sake of 
Douglas's brilliant reputation. 

Both physically and intellectually the 
campaign proved unusually strenuous. In 
addition to the seven great debates each 
candidate made engagements to speak at 
meetings of his own, sometimes at several 
meetings a day. As Illinois is a long 
State, this necessitated constant traveling. 
Douglas had a special train, gaily deco- 
rated, and appropriately besprinkled with 
campaign emblems and mottoes. Lincoln, 
less given to display, and less plentifully 
supplied with funds, used any mode of 
conveyance that offered — farm wagon, 
freight train, or local — his own engine 
having to pull up on a siding while his 
rival's special flashed by in a whirl of cin- 
ders and a roar of campaign noise. 

Processions and fireworks, music and 
121 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

banners, greeted each in turn, until it 
seemed that the whole State had turned out 
to hear the debate of these intellectual 
giants. In the northern counties, settled 
originally by people from New England, 
sentiment favored Lincoln ; the southern 
end upheld Douglas in his theory that 
slavery was not a moral issue, but purely 
a local question. 

In their very first debate, in the north- 
ern end of the State, Douglas, quick to 
seize an advantage, asked his antagonist 
a series of questions, avowedly designed to 
bring forth answers which would make him 
unpopular " down in Egypt " as the pro- 
slavery end of the State was called. At 
their second meeting Lincoln answered 
these frankly and fully, and in return asked 
Douglas four questions, the second of which 
was whether, in his opinion, the people of a 
United States territory could, in any law- 
ful way, against the wish of any citizen 
of the United States, exclude slavery be- 

122 



A NEW CANDIDATE 

fore that territory became a State. If 
Douglas answered " No," he would please 
the South, at the cost of denying his 
own theory of Popular Sovereignty. If he 
stood by his theory and answered " Yes," 
he might win the senatorship, but in doing 
so he would make bitter enemies of all the 
Democrats in the South. 

As he had done before, in sending the 
challenge, Lincoln first made up his mind 
to ask this question, and then consulted his 
friends. Mr. Judd and one or two others 
made a hurried journey and stormed the 
hotel bedroom where their candidate was 
catching a few hours' sleep, waking him 
at two in the morning to implore him not 
to ask it, or at least to modify Its form. 
" If you ask it you can never be Senator," 
they assured him. The rescue party had 
its journey for its pains. Lincoln, good 
natured but unmoved, sitting in scanty dis- 
habille on the edge of the bed from which 
he had just been routed, unconscious alike 

123 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

of anything remarkable in his personal ap- 
pearance or of anything unusual in his 
mental attitude, replied: 

" Gentlemen, I am killing larger game. 
If Douglas answers, he can never be Presi- 
dent ; and the battle of 1860 is worth a 
hundred of this." 

Yet, in spite of his wonderful political 
insight, there is no reason to suppose he 
foresaw his own prominence in the battle 
of 1860. His power of analysis could 
cut mercilessly through Douglas's most in- 
volved and fantastic arabesques of argu- 
ment, but neither his logic nor his poet's 
vision was far-reaching enough to see the 
place he was to hold in the history and 
the hearts of his native land. 

" In that day I shall fight in the ranks," 
he wrote his friend Judd; for Douglas 
answered " Yes," and in spite of Lincoln's 
majority of 3821 in the popular vote, an 
antiquated apportionment gave the legis- 

124 



ANEW CANDIDATE 

laturc, and consequently the senatorship, 
to the Democrats. 

Though disappointed, Lincoln was still 
serene. " I am glad I made the late race," 
he wrote another friend. " It gave me a 
hearing on the great and durable question 
of the age, which I could have had in no 
other way; and though I now sink out of 
view, and shall be forgotten, I believe I 
have made some marks which will tell for 
the cause of civil liberty long after I am 
gone." 

Lincoln really wanted to be Senator. "^ 
He told a friend after the Presidency was J 
practically his, that he would rather have / 
a full term in the Senate than four years 
In the White House. Douglas was willing ^ 
to play the political game to the verge of ) 
sharp practice in order to become Presi-/ 
dent. An ironical Fate — or our coun- V 
try's beneficent Providence — gave each \ 
the office desired by the other. By a J 

125 _^ 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

further irony of Fate it was Douglas him- 
self who prolonged interest in the sena- 
torial contest until it merged into the 
Presidential campaign. Having gained his 
senatorship he started on a tour of the 
slave States to make his peace with South- 
ern voters ; and in every speech he took 
pains to allude to Lincoln as the champion 
of Abolitionism, and to his views as the 
platform of the Republican party. In 
this way Lincoln was kept before the pub- 
lic as an authority. " You are like Byron 
who woke up one morning to find himself 
famous. People want to know about you," 
a Chicago editor wrote him. 

The Alleghanies still separated East 
from West in February, 1860, when Lin- 
coln went to New York to deliver his 
Cooper Institute speech. There were still 
people who thought of the men across the 
mountains as incessantly wielding bowie- 
knives. They had heard of Mr. Lincoln's 
extraordinary height, of his story-telling, 

126 



A NEW CANDIDATE 

something of his early struggles. Part of 
his audience that night came expecting to 
see a mountebank ; part from a keen inter- 
est in his speeches as reported in the news- 
papers. All were intensely curious. He, 
on his part, was equally curious to test the 
effect of his words on a representative 
Eastern audience such as filled Cooper In- 
stitute to overflowing. 

His hearers saw a very tall man with a 
sad, strongly marked face, perfectly self- 
possessed, who began his address quietly 
and soberly, as though he were addressing 
a court; who told not a single story, and 
who used so few gestures that, as one of 
his auditors expressed it, the speech might 
almost have been delivered from the head 
of a barrel. Yet the impressive earnest- 
ness of his manner, the power and closeness 
of his reasoning, and the fairness of all the 
conclusions he drew, held their absorbed 
attention. Next morning's papers showed 
that his speech had taken New York by 

127 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

storm. In New England, where he made 
a short tour before returning home, he 
was heard with equal interest by working- 
men and college professors. The first 
recognized him as one of themselves ; the 
latter marveled at his finished literary 
style. Only those who dreamed of bowie- 
knives went away disappointed. 

Lincoln's political astuteness saved him 
from one pitfall of politicians — allowing 
their friends to speak of them too soon 
as Presidential possibilities. It was only 
a few months before the actual nomination 
that he sanctioned the use of his name, and 
he did it then more with an idea of strength- 
ening him in some future contest with 
Douglas, than with reference to either 
place on the National ticket. Before go- 
ing East to deliver his Cooper Institute 
speech, however, he had become an avowed 
candidate. 

Local quarrels made It appear doubtful 
for a time if he could secure the delega- 

128 



A NEW CANDIDATE 

tion from his own State. As failure in 
this would be unfortunate for his sena- 
torial hopes, as well as for the more im- 
mediate enterprise, his presence at the 
Illinois State convention was deemed ad- 
visable, and he was in the hall as a spec- 
tator when John Hanks and a companion 
marched in bearing the rails supposed to 
have been made by him in pioneer days. 

After witnessing the furor they created, 
he did not go to the Chicago convention. 
He felt, he said, like the boy who had 
" stumped " his toe, and was too big to 
cry, and too much hurt to laugh — he 
was too much of a candidate to attend, 
and not enough of one to stay away. 

He had his nerves well in hand, but 
when the National Convention met, and 
newspapers were filled with hints that his 
knowledge of politics translated into indi- 
cations of the drift of chances, he found 
himself able to do little work. He seemed 
rather discouraged, and remarked as he 
9 129 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

threw himself down on the old office lounge, 
that " he guessed be 'd better go back to 
practising law." 

It is said that he was playing a desul- 
tory game of ball on a vacant lot near 
the Journal office when news came that his 
name was before the convention. Turning 
to his companions with one of his queerly 
humorous expressions, he disappeared 
into the newspaper office, and soon started 
for home. But progress was slow. The 
town was too excited to allow its most 
illustrious citizen to walk home unac- 
costed, and he was still in the business 
section when a boy dashed down the steps 
of the telegraph office and charged at full 
speed through the crowd, shouting at the 
top of his youthful lungs, " Mr. Lincoln, 
Mr. Lincoln, you 're nominated ! " 

People thickened around him as if by 
magic, shaking his hand and every other 
hand within reach. For a few minutes the 

130 



A NEW CANDIDATE 

central figure seemed to forget his own 
part in the general rejoicing — to be only 
one of the happy cheering throng. Then, 
excusing himself with the remark that there 
was a little woman down on Eighth Street 
who would be glad to hear the news, he 
went to tell her. 

Next day a committee from the Chicago 
convention, headed by its chairman, Mr. 
Ashmun, ranged themselves around three 
sides of Mr. Lincoln's modest parlor to 
formally notify him of its choice. Those 
who had not seen him ' before eyed him 
curiously as he stood, tall and gaunt, 
hands folded and head bent, without visi- 
ble embarrassment, but absolutely devoid 
of expression, while Mr. Ashmun made his 
little speech. 

Then, looking up, the new candidate's 
eyes and smile seemed to illumine his face 
as though a lamp had been suddenly kin- 
dled within, and he answered in a few well- 

131 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

chosen words, ending with a hearty, 
" Now I will no longer defer the pleasure 
of taking each of you by the hand." Join- 
ing Mr. Ashmun he advanced upon Gov- 
ernor Morgan of New York, the most 
imposing figure in the groupo As soon as 
Mr. Ashmun made the introduction Lin- 
coln asked his height. " Six feet three," 
was the astonished answer, and the New 
Yorker lapsed into disconcerting silence, 
wondering what irrelevant question this 
strange Presidential candidate would ask 
next. But Lincoln's genial simplicity won 
them all in spite of themselves, and as 
they passed out one member of the com- 
mittee was heard to remark to his neighbor, 
" We might have done a more brilliant 
thing, but we could hardly have a done a 
better one." 

In the East there was difference of 
opinion. " We heard the result coldly 
and sadly," Emerson confessed; and 
Charles Francis Adams thought that no 

1S2 



ANEW CANDIDATE 

experiment so rash had been tried in the 
whole history of our Government. Doug- 
las, on the other hand, learning of the 
nomination, remarked with conviction. 
" That means business." 



133 



VIII 

THE CAMPAIGN SUMMER 

BEING a Presidential candidate made 
astonishingly little difference in Mr. 
Lincoln's daily habits. More people rang 
the bell of the plain but comfortable 
house on Eighth Street. He opened the 
door himself if no one else was there to 
do it. More people stayed to dinner or 
supper on invitation of the host or the 
proud hostess, sitting down to a typically 
abundant Western table. When he ap- 
peared upon the street people came up to 
shake his hand — but they had been doing 
that for years. 

To-day it would be impossible for a 
man to achieve nomination without run- 
ning the gauntlet of innumerable cameras. 

134 



THE CAMPAIGN SUMMER 

A gentleman who visited Springfield to 
congratulate Mr. Lincoln " and form his 
personal acquaintance " ventured to ask 
him " for a good likeness." He replied 
that he had no satisfactory picture — 
" But then," he said, " we will walk out 
together, and I will sit for one." Result: 
one ambrotype ! 

The headquarters of the National Com- 
mittee remained as usual in New York. 
No " literary bureau," or other election- 
eering organization existed at Springfield. 
The local telegraph office, an inconvenient 
little apartment on the second floor of an 
office building near the Public Square, was 
not even enlarged. Lincoln wrote no pub- 
lic letters, and made no set or impromptu 
speeches, with the exception of speaking 
a word of greeting once or twice to passing 
street parades. Even the strictly confi- 
dential letters in which he gave advice on 
points in the campaign, did not exceed 
a dozen in number. 

1S5 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

The legislature not being in session, the 
Governor's room in the State House was 
set aside for his use, and here he re- 
ceived his visitors, coming in usually be- 
tween nine and ten o'clock in the morning, 
bringing with him the mail he had re- 
ceived at his own home. His office force 
consisted of one quiet young secretary, 
who assisted him with his correspondence 
in the intervals of greeting visitors ; and 
wrote wonderingly to a correspondent of 
his own that Mr. Lincoln's mail averaged 
as many as fifty letters a day. 

Many of them, being merely congratu- 
latory, needed no answer. Letters from 
personal friends, Mr. Lincoln acknowl- 
edged with his own hand; and in these 
he showed from the first considerable con- 
fidence of success. Governor Chase was 
the only one of his rivals in the convention 
to write him. His letter, among the first 
to arrive, gave Lincoln much pleasure. 
" Holding myself the humblest of all 

136 



THE CAMPAIGN SUMMER 

those whose names were before the con- 
vention," he wrote in reply, " I feel espe- 
cial need of the assistance of all ; and I am 
glad — very glad — of the indication that 
you stand ready." 

Cassius M. Clay, who had hoped to be 
nominated for Vice-president, wrote breez- 
ily: 

Well, you have cleaned us all out. The 
Gods favor you, and we must with good 
grace submit. After your nomination for 
the first post, my chances were of course 
ruined for becoming heir to your old clothes. 
It became necessary to choose a Vice-presi- 
dent from the Northeast, and of Democratic 
antecedents. But after Old Kentucky had 
come so liberally to your rescue, I think you 
might have complimented us with more than 
two votes ! Still we won't quarrel with you 
on that account. Nature does not aggregate 
her gifts; and as some of us are better look- 
ing men than yourself, we must cheerfully 
award you the post of honor. 

137 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

Allow me to congratulate you, and believe 
me truly devoted to your success, and com- 
mand my poor services if needed. 

One letter of congratulation, quite apart 
from the rest, came from an old comrade 
in the Black Hawk war. 

Respected Sir: In view of the intimacy 
that at one time subsisted between you and 
me, I deem it my duty as well as privilege, 
now that the intensity of the excitement of 
recent transactions is a little passed from 
you and from me, after the crowd of con- 
gratulations already received from many 
friends, also to offer you my heartfelt gratu- 
lation on your very exalted position in the 
great Republican party. No doubt but that 
you will become tired of the flattery of cring- 
ing selfish adulators. But I think you will 
know that what I say I feel. For the at- 
tachment in the Black Hawk campaign while 
we messed together with Johnston, Faucher, 
and Wyatt, when we ground our coffee in the 
same cup with the hatchet handle — baked 

138 



THE CAMPAIGN SUMMER 

our bread on our ramrod around the same 
fire — ate our fried meat off the same piece 
of elm bark — slept in the same tent every 
night — traveled together by day and by 
night in search of the savage foe — and to- 
gether scoured the tall grass on the battle- 
ground of the skirmish near Gratiot's Grove 
in search of the slain — with very many in- 
cidents too tedious to name — and consum- 
mated in our afoot and canoe journey home, 
must render us incapable of deception. 
Since the time mentioned, our pursuits have 
called us to operate a little apart; yours, as 
you formerly hinted, to a course of political 
and legal struggle; mine to agriculture and 
medicine. The success that we have both 
enjoyed, I am happy to know, is very en- 
couraging. I am also glad to know, although 
we must act in vastly different spheres, that 
we are enlisted for the promotion of the 
same great cause — the cause which, next to 
revealed religion (which is humility and 
love) is most dear, the cause of Liberty, as 
set forth by true Republicanism and not rank 
abolitionism. 

139 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

Then let us go on in the discharge of duty, 
trusting for aid to the Great Universal Ruler. 
Yours truly, George M. Harrison. 

Among the letters were many requests 
for his opinion on points of party doc- 
trine. For these he prepared a polite form, 
explaining why he could not comply. 
There were also many letters of advice. 
William Cullen Bryant, whom we are wont 
to consider a poet rather than a politician, 
wrote with " the frankness of an old cam- 
Ipalgner," to warn him against making 
speeches or promises — even to be chary 
of kind words. Joshua R. GIddings elo- 
quently recommended John Quincy Adams 
as the model for an untried Westerner to 
follow. Such letters Lincoln answered 
with modest sincerity. " I appreciate the 
danger against which you would guard 
me," he wrote Bryant, " nor am I wanting 
in the purpose to avoid it. I thank you 
for the additional strength your words give 
me to maintain that purpose." 

140 



THE CAMPAIGN SUMMER 

Requests for details of his personal life, 
to be used in campaign biographies, were 
refused as a rule ; but since " lives " were 
sure to be published, Lincoln made excep- 
tions and wrote with his own hand two 
short biographical sketches. The longer 
of these, covering several sheets of legal- 
cap, was turned over to one William Dean 
Howells, then unknown to fame, who wrote 
from it a Life of Abraham Lincoln which 
served its purpose and was speedily for- 
gotten. A cautious well-wisher sent the 
candidate confidential word that the proof- 
sheets must really be searchingly examined. 
He was careful to certify to the young 
gentleman's exquisite literary taste, but 
hinted darkly that his anti-slavery views 
might color the work. Needless to say 
Mr. Lincoln did not appoint a committee 
of revision ; and so far as is known, Mr. 
Howells's contribution to the campaign did 
not lose the Republican candidate any 
votes. 

141 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

After two months had gone by, and 
Lincoln had received no word from his 
companion on the ticket, he sent him the 
following characteristic little note : 

Hon. Hannibal Hamlin^ 

My Dear Sir: It appears to me that 
you and I ought to be acquainted^ and ac- 
cordingly I write this as a sort of introduc- 
tion of myself to you. You first entered the 
Senate during the single term I was a mem- 
ber of the House of Representatives, but I 
have no recollection that we were introduced. 
I shall be pleased to receive a line from you. 

The prospect of Republican success now 
appears very flattering, so far as I can per- 
ceive. Do you see anything to the contrary? 
Yours truly, A. Lincoln. 

The simplicity and friendliness of this 
wera duplicated in the simplicity and 
friendliness with which he met his visitors 
— the neighbors who trusted him, political 
friends who admired him, and doubters 
come from afar to see what manner of 

142 



THE CAMPAIGN SUMMER 

Westerner a freak of popular fancy had 
made candidate of the vigorous young Re- 
pubhcan party. They passed in and out 
of his door all day long, and each felt in- 
stinctively the kindness and honesty that 
shone from his deeply furrowed face. 
That wonderful expressive face, mirthful, 
shrewd, melancholy, and suffused with 
emotion by turns ; so homely in its rugged 
uncompromising lines, so sad in moments 
of repose; on occasion so tenderly beauti- 
ful in expression. Neighbors who knew it 
of old, loved it, though they would proba- 
bly have called it ugly. Newcomers mar- 
veled at it, but soon forgot to question if 
it were handsome or not. 

It seems odd that such a marked face 
could have been unknown to any one seek- 
ing him, yet there were those who met 
Mr. Lincoln and failed to recognize him. 
My father's notes tell of a stranger who 
asked the way to the State House. The 
tall man of whom he inquired said he was 

143 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

going there himself and offered to act as 
guide. Then, on reaching the Governor's 
room, turned upon him with a merry smile 
and quite inimitable gesture of apology, 
saying, " I am Lincoln." 

Artists got permission to paint his por- 
trait, and set up their easels in the Gov- 
ernor's room, doing their work as well as 
they could for the constant interruption 
of callers, and the marauding forays of 
Mr. Lincoln's two little boys, who appeared 
at intervals and got inextricably mixed 
with the paints, to the stifled wrath of 
the artist. Mr. Lincoln's mild, " Boys, 
boys, you must n't meddle ! Now run 
home and have your faces washed," 
seemed lamentably inadequate. 

Jones of Cincinnati established a sculp- 
tor's studio near by, and made a 
bust of Mr. Lincoln, to which the candi- 
date referred jokingly as his " mud-head." 
The sculptor Volk also made studies for 
a statue. On a certain Sunday morning he 

144 



THE CAMPAIGN SUMMER 

went by appointment to the house on 
Eighth Street to make casts of Mr. Lin- 
coln's hands. Being asked to hold a stick, 
or something of the kind, he disappeared 
into the woodshed, the sound of sawing was 
heard, and he reappeared, whittling the 
edges of a piece of broomhandle. Mr. 
Volk explained that it was not necessary 
to trim off the edges so carefully. " Oh, 
well," he said, " I thought I would like to 
have it nice." 

Presents of a symbolic nature were 
showered upon the candidate until the 
room at the State House took on the aspect 
of a museum. Mr. Lincoln used the axes, 
wedges, log-chains, and other implements 
as texts for explanations and anecdotes 
of pioneer craft ; thus making them serve 
a double purpose in amusing his visitors 
and keeping the conversation away from 
politics. 

For in all this exchange of friendly 
greeting, and under all the campaign en- 
^° 145 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

thusiasm, was a note of increasing anxiety. 
The South was making ugly threats. It 
behooved Lincoln to keep silence on party 
questions, and even more on the problems 
of national politics which loomed ever 
larger and darker as the summer ad- 
vanced. 

He was begged to issue some statement 
to allay the growing unrest in the South 

— to say something to reassure the men 
" honestly alarmed." " There are no such 
men," he answered stoutly. " It is the 
trick by which the South breaks down 
every Northern man. If I yielded to their 
entreaties I would go to Washington with- 
out the support of the men who now sup- 
port me. I would be as powerless as a 
block of buckeye wood. The honest men 

— you are talking of honest men — will 
find in our platform everything I could say 
now, or which thej^ would ask me to say." 

So he went on talking pleasantries and 
pioneer days to his visitors, watching 

146 



THE CAMPAIGN SUMMER 

meanwhile the ever-growing menace be- 
hind the circle of their friendly faces. 

The anxiety took on a personal note. In 
October his secretary wrote : " Among the 
many things said to Mr. Lincoln by his 
visitors there is nearly always an expressed 
hope that he will not be so unfortunate 
as were Harrison and Taylor, to be killed 
off by the cares of the Presidency — or 
as is sometimes hinted, by foul means. It 
is astonishing how the popular sympathy 
for Mr. Lincoln draws fearful forebodings 
from these two examples, which, after all, 
were only a natural coincidence. Not only 
do visitors mention the matter, but a great 
many letters have been written to Mr. 
Lincoln on the subject." 

Another manifestation of the same feel- 
ing was noted by the Reverend Albert Hall, 
one of the pastors of Springfield, as he sat 
in the Governor's room, waiting to speak 
to Mr. Lincoln. " Several weeks ago," he 
wrote, " two country boys came along the 

147 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

dark passage that leads to his room. One 
of them looked in at the door, and then 
called to his fellow behind, saying, ' Come 
on, he is here.' The boys entered and he 
spoke to them. Immediately one of them 
said that it was reported in their neighbor- 
hood that he (Mr. Lincoln) had been 
poisoned, and their father had sent them 
to see if the report was true. ' And,' said 
the boy with all earnestness, ' Dad says 
you must look out and eat nothing only 
what your old woman cooks for you — 
and Mother says so too ! ' " 

On election day the excitement under 
which Springfield labored reached its 
height about three o'clock in the afternoon, 
when the candidate himself appeared in 
the upper room in the Court House where 
the voting took place. He had been recog- 
nized in the street, and even the distribu- 
tors of Democratic tickets had swung their 
hats and shouted with the rest. 

As many as his townsmen as could, fol- 
148 



THE CAMPAIGN SUMMER 

lowed him through the halls and up the 
stairs, forcing themselves into the room as 
he went to the voting table and deposited 
the straight Republican ticket, from which 
his own name had been erased. A shout 
went up as he turned again toward the 
door. Hemmed in as he was by friends 
and enthusiasm, he could only take off his 
hat, and smile as he worked his way slowly 
out of the room. " And when he smiles 
heartily," the local newspaper account 
added, " there is something in it good to 
see." 

That night, after the returns began to 
come in, excitement rose again in Spring- 
field. Good news, first from near-by pre- 
cincts, then from farther away, set the 
crowds to cheering. Over in the lighted 
State House men began to shout and dance, 
and in a room across the way their wives 
and daughters dispensed smiles and good 
things to eat. 

Lincoln meanwhile sat alone in the little 
149 



ABRAHAIM LINCOLN 

telegraph office, reading the returns as 
they were handed to him. Little by little 
accumulating majorities reported from all 
directions, convinced him of Republican 
victory. With this conviction there fell 
upon him an overwhelming, almost crush- 
ing sense of his coming responsibilities. 
The noise of rejoicing broke into the 
room in waves of ever increasing sound; 
but the successful . candidate sat on alone, 
with head bowed, his deep-lined face sad 
and set — - looking into the future. 



150 



IX 

THE JOURNEY TO WASHINGTON 

N that hour Lincoln completed one of 
the great and characteristic acts of 
his life — the choice of his cabinet. He 
resolved to make his four principal rivals, 
Seward and Chase and Cameron and Bates, 
his chief advisers. The audacity and un- 
worldliness of it are alike staggering. 

Whether he already felt within him a 
power to govern men, or whether he did it 
from loyal obedience to the principles of 
representative government, knowing that 
nowhere else could he find men so truly 
representing the different elements out of 
which the Republican party had been made, 
he deliberately chose to gather them about 

151 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

him and ignore the personal questions such 
an act must precipitate. 

Then followed the troubled months pre- 
ceding his inauguration, a season for him 
of anxiety and growth, in which he passed 
from his second phase of teacher, to his 
third of ruler and magistrate. 

The South had made ugly threats be- 
fore the election, now it prepared to carry 
them out. South Carolina passed its Or- 
dinance of Secession ; and one by one the 
other Cotton States followed her example. 
Officers of the army and navy began giving 
up the Government property in their 
charge. The administration at Washing- 
ton seemed bound in a fatal lethargy; 
while Lincoln, who saw need for instant 
action, could do nothing — would be pow- 
erless until after the fourth of March. 

He did not doubt either the duty or 
the ability of the Government to maintain 
its own integrity. " That," he said, " is 
not the ugly point in the matter. The 

152 



JOURNEY TO WASHINGTON 

ugly point is the necessity of keeping the 
Government together by force, as ours 
should be a government of fraternity." 

In December his secretary brought him 
a rumor that Buchanan had ordered Major 
Anderson to give up Fort Moultrie if it 
should be attacked. 

" If that is true, they ought to hang 
him ! " Lincoln exclaimed, and went on to 
say that only the day before he had noti- 
fied General Scott to be prepared to hold 
or re-take the forts immediately after the 
Inauguration. " There can be no doubt 
that in any event that is good ground to 
live and die by," he said. 

Before the end of the year he began 
receiving notes offering the services of 
State militia to uphold National authority. 
But nobody wanted war. " Compromise " 
was the word on every lip. Letters of 
advice came to him, thick and fast. His 
visitors increased in numbers and impor- 
tance. The Chenery House, where most 

153 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

of them stayed, was so crowded with 
strangers that "dinner," as the young 
secretary sadly remarked, " is worth 
scrambHng for." 

Lincoln was urged to make up his cab- 
inet of " conservative men," one or more of 
them from the South. The difficulty of 
doing this he showed with unsparing logic 
in a little unsigned editorial printed in the 
Springfield Journal, 

" First. Is it known that any such 
gentleman of character would accept a 
place in the cabinet? 

" Second. If yea, on what terms does 
he surrender to Mr. Lincoln, or Mr. Lin- 
coln to him, on the political differences 
between them; or do they enter upon the 
administration in open opposition to each 
other.?" 

Affairs of national importance, trivial 

tasks, and this great menace filled his days 

like the interwoven details of some bad 

dream. His cabinet had been decided upon 

154 



Jamife anb §mte of i\t ^xmkvA ©led : 



HON. A. LINCOLN. 

MRS. LINCOLN AND TWO CHILDREN. 



ROBT. T. LINCOLN. 
DR. W. S. WALLACE, 



LOCKWOOD TODD 



"■uarnKTaE. 



JOHN G. NICOLAY, Esor., Private Secretary. 
JOHN M. HAY, Esqr.. A ?sistant Secretary, 
HON. N. B. JUDD, of III nois, 
liON. DAVID DAVIS, ot Illinois, 
COL. E. V. SUMNER, U ,S. A. 
MAJ. D. HUNTER, U. iS. A. 



CAPT. G. W. HAZZARD. U. S. A. 
COL. E. E. ELLSWORTH, of New York. 
COL. WARD H. LAMON, of Illinois. 
J. M. BURGESS, Esq., of Wisconsin. 
GEO. 0. LATHAM. 



W. S. WOOD. Superintendent of Arrangement!), 

BURNETT FORBES, Assistant Superintendent of Arrangements. 



Party accompanying Lincoln on the Journey from Springfield 

to Washington 



JOURNEY TO WASHINGTON 

in his own mind; but many letters and 
interviews, and the exercise of much tact 
were necessary in offering these appoint- 
ments. His inaugural had to be written, 
and its tenor kept secret from the news- 
paper men who dogged his footsteps. His 
private affairs must be put in order; the 
details of his journey to Washington de- 
cided upon; and in addition, he had to 
find time and grace to appear unhurried 
and agreeable with even his least desirable 
callers — like the " regular genuine Se- 
cessionist " who sat twirling his hat in his 
hands, half inchned to hide its blue cock- 
ade, until Lincoln took pity on him, en- 
gaged him in bantering conversation, and 
sent him away with a copy of the Lincoln- 
Douglas Debates under his arm; while a 
mannerless and humorless Yankee across 
the room, snarled, and evidently longed for 
a fight. 

Lincoln found time to pay a visit of 
farewell to his stepmother in Coles 

155 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

County; and on the day before starting 
for Washington, appeared at his old law 
office to go over matters of business with 
his partner Mr. Herndon. After they had 
finished their talk he threw himself down 
on the old lounge, and for a while neither 
spoke. He seemed to be passing in review 
the incidents of his law practice; but he 
was neither sad nor sentimental. Pres- 
ently he began to speak of amusing 
things that had happened on the Eighth 
Circuit. It was only as he was taking his 
leave that he paused on the threshold, and 
with a sudden change of tone, asked that 
the office sign be allowed to hang undis- 
turbed. " Give our clients to understand 
that the election of a President makes no 
difference," he said. " If I live I 'm com- 
ing back sometime, and we '11 go right on 
practising law, as if nothing had hap- 
pened." 

But how deeply he was moved by this 
departure from his old home, his speech 
156 



JOURNEY TO WASHINGTON 

of farewell, made from the platform of 
the train, as his neighbors stood uncov- 
ered in the falling snow, amply testified. 
There was in it a sadness and a pathos 
almost prophetic. 

" My friends : No one not in my situ- ! 
ation, can appreciate my feeling of sadness '^ 
at this parting. To this place, and the 
kindness of these people, I owe everything. 
Here I have lived a quarter of a century, 
and have passed from a young to an old 
man. Here my children have been born, 
and one is buried. I now leave, not know- 
ing when or whether ever I may return, 
with a task before me greater than that 
which rested upon Washington. Without 
the assistance of that Divine Being who 
ever attended him, I cannot succeed. With 
that assistance I cannot fail. Trusting in 
Him who can go with me, and remain 
with you, and be everywhere for good, let 
us confidently hope that all will yet be 
well. To His care commending you, as I 

157 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

hope in your prayers you will commend 
me, I bid you an affectionate farewell." 

It was true that he went to assume a 
responsibility " greater than that which 
rested upon Washington," yet the glamour 
of that journey with its cheering thousands, 
when the train seemed to be rushing 
through one continuous crowd, and every 
throat was calling his name, might have 
justified even a modest man in the belief 
that he was to have an easy task. Lin- 
coln accepted the acclaim in his heart, as 
he acknowledged it in his speeches, as a 
welcome from the people to their chief 
magistrate. 

His personal relation to the throngs was 
one of joyous comradeship. A crowd of 
clamorous enthusiastic American citizens 
drew him irresistibly. At every halt he 
was met by eager demands for a speech, 
yet it was manifestly impossible for him to 
speak everywhere. At first he gave himself 
up unreservedly to the various committees 

158 



JOURNEY TO WASHINGTON 

which tumbled into his car at every city 
and State line, and tried to drag him forth 
even before the train had come to a halt. 
But experience showed that this was fool- 
hardy. In the mad push and crush and 
confusion a false start not only hope- 
lessly dislocated the official program, but 
endangered life and limb. Major Hunter 
of his suite received serious injuries from 
mere pressure of the crowd. Lincoln 
learned to sit quietly in his car till told 
that preparations had been deliberately 
completed. But it was easy to see that 
this cost him both effort and pain. His 
sympathy with the people made him shrink 
from any protest against these eager first 
greetings; and though his judgment bade 
him refuse the popular calls for his pres- 
ence outside, his heart and feelings were 
with the shouting multitude. 

At Indianapolis, the first stopping- 
place, he struck the key-note of his duty 
and theirs in the coming crisis. " The 

159 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

maintenance of this government," he de- 
clared, " is your business, and not mine. 
I wish you to remember, now and forever, 
that if the Union of these States and the 
liberties of this people shall be lost, it is 
but little to any one man of fifty-two years 
of age, but a great deal to the thirty mil- 
lions of people who inhabit these United 
States and to their posterity in all coming 
time. It is your business to rise up and 
preserve the Union and liberty for your- 
selves, and not for me." 

This was not the usual complimen- 
tary oratory. It was a blast of cool logic, 
and had in it a ring of authority. Already 
he was the ruler. In Douglas's bullying 
tones these words might have sounded like 
a threat. But spoken with Lincoln's deep 
earnestness, the reasonableness of his posi- 
tion was manifest, and his auditors felt 
sure he would aid them to the utmost in 
their efforts to preserve the Union for 
themselves and their children. 

160 



JOURNEY TO WASHINGTON 

Whenever time would permit, public ev- 
euing receptions were arranged ; but these 
functions, added to the day's fatigue of 
travel and official ceremony, were a serious 
tax upon his strength. His friends urged 
him to stand where he could bow to the 
passers-by, instead of shaking hands. The 
experiment was tried, but he speedily re- 
belled. It changed live personal contact 
into meaningless show. He seemed to be 
on exhibition like some wild animal, and 
felt separated by an enormous chasm from 
the people with whom it was his duty, now, 
more than ever before, to come into close 
relation. This was worse than any amount 
of fatigue, and he returned to the old 
way, where a cordial grasp of the hand, 
and a fitting word established instantane- 
ous sympathy. 

The experiences of the first day devel- 
oped both the enthusiasm and the diffi- 
culties of the journey. A letter written 
that night told of the crowds. " The 
" l6l 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

house is literally jammed full of people. 
Three or four ladies and as many gentle- 
men have even invaded the room assigned 
to Mr. Lincoln ; while outside the door I 
hear the crowd grumbling and shouting in 
almost frantic endeavor to get to another 
parlor at the door of which Mr. Lincoln 
stands shaking hands with the multitude. 
It is a severe ordeal for us, increased ten- 
fold for him." 

But the letter said nothing about Mr. 
Lincoln's greatest ordeal that day, which 
was nothing less than the loss of his inau- 
gural address. It had been written and 
printed with the utmost secrecy before 
leaving Springfield ; but with curious opti- 
mism Mr. Lincoln placed it for the jour- 
ney in a little old-fashioned black oil-cloth 
carpet-bag, which he gave in charge of his 
eldest son, Robert, without telling him 
what the bag contained. 

To Robert, full of the exuberant care- 
162 



JOURNEY TO WASHINGTON 

lessness of eighteen, the trip seemed much 
more a triumphal progress than to his 
father. In the recent campaign he had 
come in for a certain amount of notice as 
the "Prince of Rails," a pendant to his 
father's sobriquet, "The Illinois Rail- 
Splitter"; and at every stopping-place 
a group of " the boys " stood ready to 
seize upon him and do the honors after 
their own capricious fashion. 

At Indianapolis, partly from inexperi- 
ence on the part of the travelers, partly 
from insufficient police control, only a por- 
tion of the suite reached the carriages in- 
tended for them. The rest, including 
Robert, had to force their way, luggage in 
hand, as best they could, to their hotel. 
Even so they reached it long before the 
others, who were being conscientiously 
driven through the streets in procession. 
No sooner had Mr. Lincoln arrived and 
worked his way through the packed corri- 

163 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

dors to his room, than he was called out 
again, to address the crowd from a bal- 
cony. 

When at last he had time to think of 
the little black bag, Robert was not to 
be found. Feverish inquiries developed 
that he was off with " the boys," and still 
more time elapsed before he could be lo- 
cated and brought back. To his father's 
impetuous questions he replied with bored 
and injured virtue that having arrived in 
the confusion, with no room to go to, he 
had handed the bag to the hotel clerk — 
after the usual manner of travelers. 

" And what did the clerk do with it ? " 
his father asked. 

" It is on the floor behind the counter," 
was the complacent answer. 

Visions of his inaugural in all the morn- 
ing papers floated before the President- 
elect, as without a word he threw open 
his door and began making his way 
through the crowded halls to the office. 

164 



JOURNEY TO WASHINGTON 

One single stride of his long legs swung 
him across the clerk's desk, and he fell 
upon the small mountain of luggage accu- 
mulated behind it. Taking a little key 
from his pocket, he began delving for 
black bags, and opening such as the key 
would unlock, while bystanders craned 
their necks, and the horrified clerk stood 
open-mouthed. The first half dozen 
yielded an assortment of undesired and 
miscellaneous articles; then he came upon 
his own, inviolate — and Robert had no 
more porter's duty during the rest of the 
trip. 

It was not the least of the strange con- 
trasts in Mr. Lincoln's career, that after 
the enthusiasm and acclamations of this 
journey, he was forced to enter Washing- 
ton secretly, under cover of night. News 
of the plot against his life, coming from 
two sources, equally trustworthy, was too 
serious to disregard; and though he was 
averse to such a course, believing that 

165 



Abraham Lincoln 

" assassination of public officers is not an 
American crime," he was too impartial and 
just to deny that this was no longer a 
question of his personal desires, or even 
of his private life, but of the orderly 
transmission of authority. 

When it became known that the Presi- 
dent-elect had entered the Nation's capital 
in such manner, great was the wonder 
and the criticism. The town was semi- 
Southern, and not at all inclined to greet 
the newcomer with open arms. This act 
gave another peg upon which to hang 
criticism. Stanton, with a world of ma- 
lignity in his tone, spoke of the way Lin- 
coln " crept into Washington." Others 
called it " that smuggling business." No 
one seemed to reflect that it required more 
courage for a brave man to conquer his 
natural aversion to such a course than to 
follow his impulse and disregard the warn- 
ing. 

The Presidential party was quartered 
166 



JOURNEY TO WASHINGTON 

at Willard's. " The original plan was to 
go to a private house which had been 
rented for the occasion," we learn by a 
letter from one of the suite. " This plan 
having been changed, and no rooms having 
been reserved, all the party except Mr. 
and Mrs. Lincoln have but sorry accom- 
modations." 

Here during the week before inaugura- 
tion Lincoln received visits of ceremony 
from President Buchanan and the outgoing 
cabinet, from his rivals in the recent cam- 
paign, Douglas and Breckinridge, from 
the fruitless Peace Congress then in ses- 
sion, which came in a body, headed by its 
chairman, Ex-president Tyler, and from 
many lesser social and political lights. 
Here also, when such formalities were not 
in progress, the crowded hotel parlors, 
so thronged " as to make it seem like hav- 
ing a party every night," turned a battery 
of not altogether friendly eyes upon the 
President-elect and his suite. His sim- 

167 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

plicity of manner and his apt replies al- 
ternately amused and impressed the on- 
lookers. 

Douglas especially, critical and a bit 
malicious, yet full of State pride, and 
of admiration for Lincoln personally, 
watched him. " He has not yet got out 
of Springfield," he said. " He has his 
wife with him. He does not know that he 
is President-elect of the United States, sir. 
He does not see that the shadow he casts 
is any bigger now than it was last year — 
but he will soon find it out when he is 
once inside the White House." 

" There is not the slightest apprehen- 
sion about trouble at the Inauguration — 
or any other time. That cloud has blown 
over," one of the suite wrote home. That 
was the universal hope, yet General Scott 
saw to it that all possible precautions were 
taken. Military preceded and followed 
and trotted in double files on each side of 
the carriage in which the two Presidents 

168 



TO THE COMMITTEE OF ARRANGEMENTS 

For the RECEPTION OF THE PRESIDENT ELECT : 

GENTLEMEN:— 

AW : , ,u • A ^^PSf^'^^'Sf with the responsibility of the safe conduct of the President elect, 
and his suite to then- destination, I deem jt my duty, for special reasons which you will readilv rnm 
prehend, to oner the lollowmg suggestions : ■' ^"'"" 

First: The President elect will under no cbrciimstances attempt to pass firouch any crowd unlii 9„rh 
arrangements are made as will meet the approval of Col. Ellsworth, who is charged with the rfRnnnri 
bility of all matters of this character, and .to focilitate this, you will confera favor by piacint Tol F l»." 
worth in communication With the chief * f your escort, immediately upon the arrival of the train. 



THE PRESIDENT ELECT, 

COL. LA.MON, or other Members! of his Suite, 

O&e or two members of the Escort or Committee. 

COL. E. V. SUMNER, U S. A., 
MAJ. D. HUNTER. U. S. A., 
HON. N. B. JUDD, of Illinois, 
HON. DAVID DAVIS, of Illinois. 



COL. E. E. ELLSWORTli 

CAPT. HAZZAKD, 

JOHN G. NICOLAY. Esq. Privule Secret arv 

Member of tiie Escort, " * 

ROBT. T. LINCOLN, 

JOHN M. HAY, As.sistant Secretary, 

Two Members of the Escoit, 



The other members of the suite may be arranged at your pleasure by your committee on the cars 
Two cairiages will be reqaired to convey Mrs. Lincoln and family and her escort from the cars. 

Mr. Lincoln's Secretaries will require rooms contiguous to the President elect. 

A private dining room with table for six or eight persons". 

Mr. Wood will also require a room near the President elect, for the accommodarion of himself and 
Secretary. 

The other members of the suite will be placed as near as con venient. 

For the convenience of the committee, a li.st of the names of the suite arranged in their proper order 
is appended. 

Trusting, gentiemeu, that inasmuch as we have a common purpose in tl is matter, the safety, conn 
fort and convenience of the President elect, these suggestions will be received in the spirit in which 
they are offered, I have the honor to be your Obedient Servant, 

W S. WOOD, Superintendent. 



Handbill used on Lincoln's Journey to Washington 



JOURNEY TO WASHINGTON 

rode to the Capitol on the morning of In- 
auguration. Squads of riflemen were 
posted on the roofs of commanding houses 
along Pennsylvania Avenue. Cavalry 
guarded the side-street crossings along the 
route of the procession. There were rifle- 
men in the windows of the Capitol ; and on 
the brow of Capitol Hill, in a position to 
command the approach, and also the broad 
plaza where the out-door ceremonies took 
place, a battery of flying artillery stood 
ready either to thunder forth a salute, or 
to do more deadly work. 

With the mailed hand thus very thinly 
disguised In the glove of ceremony, Lin- 
coln was made President. Fortunately 
there was not the slightest disturbance. 
" A fine day and a fine display. A grati- 
fying and glorious inauguration," was the 
summing up sent back to Illinois. 

The focus of all eyes was a group of 
four men, representing the political past 
and future of the country. One of them 

169 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

was Douglas, who had brought about the 
repeal of the Missouri Compromise. An- 
other was Chief Justice Taney, who had 
announced the Dred Scott decision. A 
third was Buchanan, whose use and misuse 
of official power had helped on the mischief 
born of these two acts. The fourth was 
Lincoln, who must now bring the country 
through the crisis they had done so much 
to precipitate. 

Very strong and vigorous he looked, in 
contrast with the white-haired, withered 
Buchanan. Very tall he loomed over the 
short and stocky Douglas, who courteously 
held his hat when he rose to dehver his 
inaugural address. Very clear and far- 
reaching his voice sounded over the listen- 
ing crowd as he spoke words which could 
not be misunderstood. 

No President ever entered upon his du- 
ties with so impartial yet so firm a declara- 
tion of official intention. His inaugural 
declared the Union perpetual, the Con- 

170 



JOURNEY TO WASHINGTON 

stitution unbroken, ordinances of secession 
void. He would maintain the Government 
and execute the laws, but there would be 
no violence or bloodshed unless forced upon 
the National authority. " In your hands, 
my dissatisfied fellow countrymen, and 
not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil 
war." Then, as if this statement of fair- 
ness and justice were too harsh, he con- 
tinued : " I am loath to close. We are 
not enemies but friends. We must not be 
enemies," and so on to the end of his 
appeal for a more perfect understanding. 

A cheer greeted the conclusion. Chief 
Justice Taney arose, and again Mr. Lin- 
coln looked very tall and vigorous, stand- 
ing in front of him, as he laid his hand 
upon the open Bible and repeated, dis- 
tinctly and deliberately, the oath of office. 

The battery on the brow of the hill 
boomed its salute. Again the people 
cheered; and entering their carriage, the 
withered old man, and the vigorous 

171 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

Westerner rode back along Pennsylvania 
Avenue to the White House, where 
Buchanan took cordial leave of the new 
President, wishing him success and happi- 
ness in his administration. 
Success, and happiness ! 



172 



X 

EVERY-DAY LIFE AT THE WHITE HOUSE 

THE menace of war, which had been 
drawing hourly nearer since the elec- 
tion, crossed the threshold by his side. 
Speaking to an old friend, months later, 
Lincoln said : " Browning, of all the trials 
I have had since I came here, none begin 
to compare with those I had between the 
inauguration and the fall of Fort Sumter. 
They were so great that could I have an- 
ticipated them, I would not have believed 
it possible to survive them. The first 
thing that was handed me after I entered 
this room when I came from the inaugura- 
tion, was the letter from Major Anderson, 
saying that their provisions would be ex- 

173 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

hausted before an expedition could be sent 
to their relief." 

Before the administration was an hour 
old the issue was upon him, yet the North 
would talk only of compromise. Horace 
Greeley had printed an editorial declaring 
that the Union could not be pinned to- 
gether with bayonets. Mercantile inter- 
ests, fearing to lose Southern trade, clam- 
ored loudly for concession. Buchanan had 
apologized to Ex-president Tyler for al- 
lowing a few soldiers to carry the flag 
through the streets of the capital on Wash- 
ington's birthday. Public opinion was 
awry. To use Lincoln's own forceful 
words, " sinners were calling the righteous 
to repentance." In Washington men pro- 
tested their loyalty to the new President in 
the morning, and at night started south to 
join the confederacy. Congress had ad- 
journed without providing means to meet 
the rebellion. It fell upon Lincoln, not 
only to make momentous decisions, but to 

174 



LIFE AT WHITE HOUSE 

assume responsibilities rightly belonging 
to the legislative branch of the Govern- 
ment. 

For, though the fall of Fort Sumter 
cleared the air, and drew the line sharply 
between patriotism and treason, it precipi- 
tated a flood of new questions — how to 
provide troops ; how to get money to pay 
troops ; how to choose efficient generals to 
lead troops ; and how to answer the ques- 
tions foreign governments were sure to ask. 

Once started, from small beginnings of 
riot and panic, and an early harvest of 
death which seemed appalling, yet would 
have passed unnoticed in the slaughter of 
later campaigns, the avalanche of war 
swept on through four interminable years. 
After the expectation of speedy victory 
died away, it was Lincoln's lot to watch 
with sickening anxiety the procession of 
unsuccessful campaigns, and to learn by 
sad experience the deficiencies of his gen- 
erals. 

175 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

The slow grinding torture of those 
days — the thing which wore on him, body 
and soul, and turned him from a vigorous 
man to an old one, was not the physical 
labor of the Presidency, imnlense as that 
was — nor his realization of the horror 
and waste of war, deep as that was. It 
was seeing the need with such pitilessly 
clear vision, grasping the vast problem 
with the logic which made him " the ablest 
strategist of the war," and yet being un- 
able to infuse his own spirit and vision 
into the men through whom the fight must 
be made. Even his subordinates felt this. 
His secretary longed " to get into the most 
active and hottest part of the fight, wher- 
ever that may be." " This being where I 
can overlook the whole war and never be 
in it — always threatened with danger and 
never meeting it — constantly worked to 
death and yet accomplishing nothing, 
grows exceedingly irksome. It is a feel- 

176 



Autograph Text of Address to Foreign Envoys 



LIFE AT WHITE HOUSE 

mg of duty and not of inclination which 
keeps me here." 

If these were the fcchngs of the young 
man who kncAv he could throw himself into 
the thick of the fight whenever he chose to 
leave the post to which he had been as- 
signed, how much more must have been the 
suffering of his. chief, on whom the whole 
crushing responsibility lay, and whom no 
earthly power could release. No wonder 
he said to General Schenck : " If to be 
the head of Hell is as hard as what I have 
to undergo here, I could find it in my heart 
to pity Satan himself." 

A memorandum in the handwriting of 
my father, found in a sealed envelope en- 
dorsed, " A private paper. Conversation 
with the President, October 2, 1861," 
though the merest skeleton of their talk, 
shows how uncompromisingly he faced con- 
ditions. 



177 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 



POLITICAL. 

Fremont ready to rebel. 

Chase despairing. 

Cameron utterly ignorant and regardless 
of the course of things, and the probable 
result. Selfish and openly discourteous 
to the President. Obnoxious to the 
country. Incapable either of organiz- 
ing details or conceiving and executing 
general plans. 

FINANCIAL. 

Immense 
claims left 
-for Con- 
gress to 
audit. 

Over-draft to-day, Oct. 2, 1861, $12,- 

000,000. 
Chase says new loan will be exhausted in 

11 days. 

MILITARY. 

Kentucky successfully invaded. 
Missouri virtually seized. 
178 



Credit gone at St. Louis. 
Cincinnati. 
Springfield. 



LIFE AT WHITE HOUSE 

October here, and instead of having a force 
ready to descend the Mississippi, the 
probability is that the Army of the West 
will be compelled to defend St. Louis. 

Testimony of Chase 

Bates 
the Blairs 

Meigs 

Gower 

Gurley 

Browning 

Thomas, that everything in 
the West, military and financial, is in 
hopeless confusion. 

And in view of odds like these it was his 
duty to keep up the spirits of the country ! 
To foster the morale of the people, without 
which victories in the field would have been 
as impossible as for the soldiers to breathe 
without oxygen. The strength and natu- 
ral buoyancy of the. man who could look 
such situations in the face, and smile, and 
tell stories, is difficult to comprehend. 

179 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

Once, nioiilJis after it happened, the 
President told of being v/akened at night 
at the Soldiers' Home by a general who 
came in a panic to urge the immediate 
flight of McClellan's army from Harri- 
son's Landing, the soldiers to be hurried 
away on transports, and their horses killed, 
because it was evident they could not be 
saved. " Thus often," said the President, 
" I, who am not a specially brave man, 
have had to restore the sinking courage 
of these professional fighters in critical 
times." 

But he was only human. His early fits 
of gloom, conquered and fought down, 
were occasionally echoed in these moods, 
when he seemed constrained to think aloud, 
before a listener he could trust — not for 
the benefit of the other's advice, but to get 
his thought into words. Possibly also he 
craved the listener's silent sympathy. 
Carl Schurz wrote of such an interview, 
and Leonard Swett told of being sent for 

180 



LIFE AT WHITE HOUSE 

by Lincoln, who read letters from Ameri- 
cans and foreigners about emancipation, 
and then, laying the letters aside, dis- 
cussed the question himself from many 
points of view, without asking Mr. Swett's 
advice, or even seeking to impress his own 
ideas upon him. Mr. Swett felt himself 
more an observer of the President's men- 
tal processes than a hearer of his voice. 
Finally he wished his visitor a safe jour- 
ney home, and the audience was over. 
Evidently this earlier talk with his secre- 
tary was the outcome of another such im- 
perative need. That it was unusual, and 
impressive, is plain from the manner in 
which the note was preserved. 

In spite of the war, daily life went on, 
as daily life must, in a round of incidents 
trivial in themselves. The tragic back- 
ground was made endurable by a great 
hope, and against it details of common- 
place living etched a curious, inconsequent, 
never-ending pattern. 

181 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

Lincoln was servant of the people 
equally by heart's impulse and in fulfil- 
ment of his oath. Every hour was dedi- 
cated to their service. His day began 
early, and ended only when physical weari- 
ness drove him to his bed. Frequently at 
night he could not sleep, and rose to wan- 
der from room to room. 

At first all his time was taken up with 
office seekers. " The grounds, halls, stair- 
\ ways, closets, are filled with applicants, 
who render ingress and egress difficult," 
Secretary Seward wrote. Mr. Lincoln be- 
gan by trying to receive these importu- 
nates, and attend to official business, twelve 
full hours a day. Later his reception 
hours were limited, in theory, from ten 
o'clock to one; but it was in theory only. 

" I am looking forward with a good deal 
of eagerness to when I shall have time to 
at least read and write my letters in peace 
without being haunted continually by 
some one who ' wants to see the President 

182 



LIFE AT WHITE HOUSE 

for only fvc minutes,'' At present this 
request meets me from almost every man, 
woman and cliild I see, whetlier by day or 
by night, in the house, or on the street," 
my father wrote wlien they had been in 
Washington three weeks. 

That day of leisure never came. Be- 
fore the office-seekers had been disposed of, 
war filled the house with a totally different 
class of visitors — men who wanted com- 
missions, others who wished to furnish 
stores to the army, inventors with im- 
proved engines of destruction, and a never- 
ending stream of officers in search of pro- 
motion. 

Although, with the voluntary resigna- 
tions of officials who went south to join the 
rebellion, and the countless military ap- 
pointments made necessary by the new 
armies, no President has had such an in- 
crease in the number of places at his dis- 
posal, they were not nearly enough for the 
hungry hordes. " Gentlemen," he said to 

183 



^ 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

a group who urged the benefit of the cli- 
mate as additional reason for appointing 
their candidate Commissioner to the Sand- 
wich Islands, " I am sorry to say that 
there are eight other applicants for the 
place, all sicker than your man." 

That was long before the days of Civil 
Service reform, but Lincoln's ideas of fair- 
ness gave a full equivalent. The patient 
thoroughness he lavished on his appoint- 
ments has inspired many reminiscences. 

"What is the matter? " a friend asked 
in alarm, coming upon him sad and de- 
pressed. " Have you bad news from the 
army? " 

" No, it is n't the army," he replied with 
one of his weary, humorous smiles. " It is 
the post-office at Brownsville, Missouri." 

He had steadily refused to make any 
promises before his election. " I will go 
to Washington, if at all, an unpledged 
man," he declared. " Justice to all " was 
the motto he announced to Mr. Seward 

184 



LIFE AT WHITE HOUSE 

when he tendered liim the office of Secre- 
tary of State, and he steadfastly and con- 
sistently tried to enforce it, even down to 
the post-office at Brownsville, Missouri. 

War's toll brought an increasing num- 
ber of applications for office on the part 
of disabled soldiers and also of soldiers' 
widows. "My conclusion is," he wrote 
the Postmaster General, "that other 
things being equal, they have the better 
right." 

Justice to all included the Government 
as well as individuals, and prompted letters 
like the following: 

My dear Sir: I understand a bill is be- 
fore Congress by your instigation, for taking 
your office from the control of the Depart- 
ment of the Interior, and considerably en- 
larging the powers and patronage of your 
office. The proposed change may be right 
for aught I know, and it certainly is right for 
Congress to do as it thinks proper in the 
case. What I wish to say is, that if the 

185 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

change is made, I do not think I can allow 
you to retain the office; because that would 
be encouraging officers to be constantly in- 
triguing, to the detriment of the public 
interest, in order to profit themselves. 

In the rare cases where justice to all 
could be combined with special favors, he 
took particular pleasure. Having a spe- 
cially warm spot in his heart for artists 
and men of letters, he asked the Secretary 
of State to " watch out " for " some of 
those moderate-sized consulates which fa- 
cilitate artists a little in their profession," 
in order that he might gratify the sculptor 
who made his " mud-head," and certain 
other talented youths, William Dean How- 
ells among them. It is to be observed, 
however, that he did not direct the Secre- 
tary of State to create opportunities — he 
only asked him to watch for them. 

One favor which he had no cause to 
regret he granted with some reluctance. 

186 



Cy4/V^^ II. I?<.l- 

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President's Note about a Post-office Appointment, with 
Montgomery Blair's Endorsement 



LIFE AT WHITE HOUSE 

It became evident before they left Spring- 
field that my father would need an assist- 
ant, and he ventured to ask that his friend, 
John Hay, be allowed to accompany them. 
Mr. Lincoln at first demurred : " I can't 
take all Illinois with me ! " he said, with a 
whimsical grimace. 

Occasionally justice and common sense 
inspired him to benevolent despotism in ap- 
pointments as in other matters. 

" Dear Sir : I personally wish Jacob 
Freese of New Jersey to be appointed 
colonel for a colored regiment, and this re- 
gardless of whether he can tell the exact 
shade of Julius Csesar's hair," was one of 
the characteristic notes sent to Stanton. 
It probably made the choleric Secretary of 
War sputter with wrath, but accomplished 
its worthy end. 

Although Lincoln's manner was one of 
almost unfailing good humor and quiet 
tolerance, there were times when he showed 
that his patience had limits. When the 

187 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

flood of place-seekers was at its height, a 
delegation came to urge California ap- 
pointments which were earnestly opposed 
bj Lincoln's early friend, Colonel E. D. 
Baker, who had become Senator from Ore- 
gon. The spokesman of the delegation, 
both in his speech and in the papers he 
presented, made bitter and criminal accu- 
sations against Baker, which the President 
knew to be unfounded. He intimated as 
much, but the accuser persisted. Lincoln 
heard him through in silence, and when he 
had finished handed him back the papers. 

" Keep them, sir," the man said. " I 
wish you to keep them. They are yours." 

"Mine to do with as I please.'^" the 
President asked quickly. 

" Yes," was the reply. 

Mr. Lincoln stepped to the fireplace, 
thrust the papers between the blazing 
brands, and as the room was lighted by the 
fresh flame dismissed the interviewers with 
a stern '' Good morning, gentlemen." 

188 



LIFE AT WHITE HOUSE 

One of his wearisome and unavoidable 
tasks was signing commissions sent over 
every day from the War and Navy De- 
partments. Every appointment and pro- 
motion in the regular army, as well as 
many in the volunteer service, necessitated 
a new commission. These, made out on 
heavy parchment, very oily and hard to 
write upon, would be placed on his desk in 
piles six or eight inches high, and he would 
sit working away at them with the patient 
industry of a laborer sawing wood. 

His correspondence also took much time, 
though he read only about one in a hun- 
dred of the letters addressed to him. He 
rarely dictated. He either made a verbal 
or written summary for his secretary, or 
carefully wrote out the whole himself — 
and frequently carefully copied it. All his 
important state papers and political letters 
were signed with his full name. His signa- 
ture on less formal documents was " A. Lin- 
coln." The range of his daily correspond- 

180 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

ence ran the whole gamut from naming 
a baby to the most important national 
and international affairs, and in addition 
he made many endorsements, some of them 
lengthy, on communications he did not 
answer. 

" O. H. P. trying to resign an office 
which he does not hold," was one of them. 
Another read: 

" It seems to me Mr. C. knows nothing 
about the weather in advance. He told 
me three days ago that it would not rain 
again till the thirtieth of April or first of 
May. It is raining now, and has been for 
ten hours. I cannot spare any more time 
to Mr. C." Such notes were apt to ex- 
press a certain finality. 

Among the most beautiful of his letters 
were those written to parents whose sons 
had died in battle. " He bore the sorrows 
of the nation in his heart," as John Hay 
said. No amount of repetition could dull 
his ears to the pitiful cry of bereavement. 

190 















Two Characteristic Endorsements, and a Call to a Special 

Cabinet Meeting 



LIFE AT WHITE HOUSE 

When young Ellsworth, whom he knew 
personally, was killed at Alexandria, one 
of the first victims of the war, he not only 
wrote to his parents, but directed that his 
body be brought to the White House as if 
he were his own son ; and the funeral was 
held in the great East Room. 

Gradually under the strain of responsi- 
bility and care, his demeanor changed. 
He was just as cordial, just as kindly; 
but his infectious laughter was less often 
heard; and from brooding on serious and 
weighty things he acquired an air of de- 
tachment. " Lincoln's prevailing mood in 
later years was one of meditation," my 
father wrote. " Unless engaged in con- 
versation, the external world was a thing 
of minor interest. Not that he was what 
is called absentminded. He did not for- 
get the spectacles on his nose, and his eye 
and ear lost no sound or movement about 
him when he sat writing in his office or 
passed along the street. But while he 

191 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

noted external incidents, they remained 
secondary. His mind was ever busy in 
reflection. Sometimes he would sit for an 
hour, still as a petrified image, his soul 
absent in the wide reahn of thought." 
Then the entrance of a friend would sum- 
mon his spirit back, the kindling eye 
and quaint remark would anticipate the 
friendly hand clasp, and wit and practical 
common sense rule the interview. 

Even a President as hard working as 
Lincoln had to have relaxation. He used 
to drive late in the afternoon; though this 
could hardly be called diversion, since his 
objective point was apt to be one of the 
earthworks which circled Washington, or 
one of the military hospitals. 

He gave much attention to the hos- 
pitals ; especially to the building of one 
which should be a model; consulting the 
doctor in charge over ingenious devices for 
the comfort of the wounded, and paying 

192 



LIFE AT WHITE HOUSE 

* 

for some of them out of his own pocket. 
He also provided flower seeds to turn the 
square in which it stood into something less 
dismal than a waste of clay and weeds. 

In his visits to the hospitals he gave out 
far more vitality and sympathy than he 
gained. " There was no medicine equal 
to the cheerfulness his visit inspired, but 
its effect on him was saddening in the ex- 
treme," said one who watched him on such 
a round. 

His influence upon the well was no less 
marked than upon the sick. A nineteen- 
year-old surgeon who was detailed to take 
Mr. Lincoln through the hospital at City 
Point just a week before the assassination, 
never forgot leading him through ward 
after ward, until finally they came to that 
filled with sick and wounded prisoners. 
With a feehng of patriotic duty, he said : 
" Mr. President, you won't want to go in 
there; they are only rebels." The Presi- 

13 193 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

dent stopped, and laying his large hand 
on his shoulder gently answered, " You 
mean Confederates." 

Mr. Lincoln had a quick comprehension 
of mechanical principles, and found both 
amusement and interest in the cloud of in- 
ventors with devices important or vision- 
ary, that the war brought to Washington. 
One proposed to do away with the need for 
bridges by giving each soldier a pair of 
little watertight canoes, one for each foot. 
Another had an epoch-making scheme for 
moving artillery by means of iron-clad bal- 
loons. Some of them obtained permission 
to set up models in the White House base- 
ment, and the grounds south of the Execu- 
tive Mansion became a favorite place for 
trying the new guns. When he could es- 
cape from the labors of the office, or omit 
his daily drive, Mr. Lincoln stole away to 
watch the experiments, to take his turn at 
the shooting, and enjoy the remarks of the 
bystanders. He quoted with deep appre- 

194* 



LIFE AT WHITE HOUSE 

elation the verdict of one man, who com- 
demned a marvelous gun because of its 
shght recoil. " It would not do," he said. 
" Too much powder. A good piece of au- 
dience should n't rekyle. If it did at all, 
it should rekyle a little forrid." 

Flag raisings and reviews became as 
much a part of the routine as breakfast. 
Lincoln's first Fourth of July as President 
was marked by both these functions. 
" One pretty incident of the review," my 
father wrote, " was the passing of the 
Garibaldi Guards, a regiment made up en- 
tirely of foreigners, whose colonel's com- 
mands in French were translated in 
process of transmission to the men into 
German, Spanish, Italian, Hungarian, and 
several other tongues. Each man had 
stuck a flower or a sprig of green into his 
hat, and as the successive ranks passed the 
President, they took them out and threw 
them toward him, until he stood in a per- 
fect shower of leaves and blossoms." One 

195 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

wonders what became of these sons of the 
Old World who paid floral tribute to the 
Son of the Prairies. They were sent 
across the Potomac, " and having an idea 
that there was a fight ahead, marched sing- 
ing the Marseillaise, with loaves of bread 
stuck on the points of their bayonets " — 
and so, out of history. 

An ingenuous soldier boy wrote home to 
his family in Maine that at the flag-raising 
the President wore plain citizen's clothes 
" with blue kid gloves " which were short 
at the wrist and showed his bare arm as he 
pulled the rope " with as much deliberation 
as though he had been working his old flat- 
boat down the river." 

Sudden emotion choked the boy as the 
colors floated free, and a burst of military 
music and cheering filled the air. But it 
was the President's smile which impressed 
him most. " I think I should wilHngly 
ride fifty miles to vote for him again as I 
did last November," he wrote. 

196 



LIFE AT WHITE HOUSE 

He watched the 71st New York escort 
Mr. Lincohi back to the White House. 
" I wish you could liave seen him march. 
He paid httle or no attention to the music 
of Dodworth, but paced off at an irregular 
rate " — the pioneer gait that he never ex- 
changed for city-bred movements — " while 
Mr. Seward, whose arm he held, was seen 
to keep step, his ' left foot on the down 
beat.' " 

The boy lingered near the White House 
until he saw the President at one of the 
windows, spyglass in hand, looking toward 
the Old Dominion. How many times he 
used that glass to sweep the Virginia hills ! 
How many times he and Mr. Seward trav- 
eled the same road, not quite in step, but 
one in purpose! How many, many times 
his. smile and spirit won men and women 
as they captivated that boy ! 



197 



XI 

PRESIDENT LINCOLISr, HIS WIFE AND 
CHIKdREN 

LINCOLN was an unusually affec- 
tionate and indulgent father. A 
paragraph in a letter to his friend Speed 
shows that he and his wife had the ex- 
periences and emotions common to proud 
parents. 

We have another boy, born the 10th of 
March. He is very much such a child as 
Bob was at his age, rather of a longer order. 
Bob is ** short and low/* and I expect always 
will be. He talks very plainly — almost as 
plainly as anybody. He is quite smart 
enough. I sometimes fear that he is one of 
the little rare-ripe sort that are smarter at 

198 



HIS WIFE AND CHILDREN 

about five than ever after. He lias a great 
deal of that sort of mischief that is tlie off- 
spring of such animal spirits. Since I began 
this letter, a messenger came to tell me Bob 
was lost; but by the time I reached the house 
his mother had found him and had him 
whipped, and by now, very likely, he is run 
away again. 

The second child died in infancy, but 
two others were born to them, both boys. 
Their father liked to have them with him, 
even when to others they appeared decid- 
edly troublesome. If they swarmed too 
persistently over his person he brushed 
them away like gnats, but he never turned 
them out of the room or reproved them, ex- 
cept in the mildest manner. When they 
began to go to school he studied with 
them. 

One of his Springfield neighbors, re- 
calling how constantly they were in his 
company, tells of being attracted to the 
door one day by hearing children cry. He 

199 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

saw Mr. Lincoln striding by with two of 
his sons, both wailing loudly. 

" Why, what is the matter with the 
boys? " he asked. 

" Just what is the matter with the 
whole world," was the answer. " I 've got 
three walnuts, and each wants two." 

" Bob," the eldest, showed a grasp of 
principles and property rights in dealing 
with his brothers which foreshadowed suc- 
cess in business and diplomacy. Mr. Lin- 
coln came upon his youngest clinging like 
a burr to Robert, and demanding a knife 
the latter held in his hand. " Oh, let him 
have it. Bob, to keep him quiet," he urged. 
" No," Bob replied. " It is my knife, and 
I need it to keep me quiet." 

" He promises very well, considering we 
never controlled him much," the father 
wrote of this eldest son. 

Wlien Lincoln was inaugurated Robert 
had just entered Harvard. The others, 
Wilhe and Thomas, or " Tad," aged ten 

200 



HIS WIFE AND CHILDREN 

and eight, respectively, ranged lawless and 
lovable, over the Executive iNIansIon. No 
room was sacred from their intrusion ; no 
conference too weighty to be broken in 
upon by the rush of their onslaught. 
They instituted a minstrel show in the 
attic, and inserted dogs, cats, goats and 
ponies into various crevices of the domestic 
establishment. 

It was the elder of these, a child of great 
promise, bright and gentle and studious, 
who sickened and died in February, 1862. 
" A fine boy of eleven years, too much 
idolized by his parents," Attorney-General 
Bates wrote in his diary; adding that the 
Government departments were closed on 
the day of his funeral — the only time, 
probably, that the death of a child has 
been so observed in the history of our 
country. 

Lincoln allowed his bereavement to make 
no difference in his daily tasks, and gave 
little outward sign of his grief; but his 

201 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

heart lavished its tenderness on his young- 
est child, Tad, a merry warm-hearted 
little lad, who interrupted his father's 
gravest labors with impunity, and found 
safe refuge in his office from the domestic 
authorities. 

He must have been a winning small boy, 
in spite of his talent for keeping himself 
and others in hot water, for even the gruff 
Secretary of War succumbed, and in a 
moment of indiscretion commissioned him 
a lieutenant. Tad's next exploit was to 
drill the household servants, and one night, 
to relieve the regular sentries, and put 
them all on duty. His father, thinking it 
a good joke, refused to interfere, until the 
small officer, wearied by his authority, fell 
asleep, when the Commander-in-Chief of 
the Army carried him tenderly to bed, and 
then went downstairs and dismissed the 
awkward squad. 

The boy, running in and out among the 
202 



HIS WIFE AND CHILDREN 

visitors waiting to see the President, be- 
came their active champion. One day he 
rushed into his father's office and asked 
permission to introduce some " friends," 
returning with a delegation Mr. Lincoln 
had been dexterously avoiding. Once in- 
side the door, he stopped, asked the name 
of the oldest of the group, presented him 
to his father, and added, " Now, Judge, 
you introduce the rest ! " The President, 
fairly caught, took him on his knee, kissed 
him, told him he had introduced his friends 
like a gentleman, and made the best of an 
interview which could not be satisfactory 
to either side. 

Lincoln's love for children did not stop 
with his own sons. He was greeted with 
ecstasy by the group of grandchildren 
who roamed over the country place of F. 
P. Blair, Sr., a few miles from Washing- 
ton ; and they remember to this day the 
abandon with which he entered into their 

203 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

games, how long his strides were, and how 
far his coat tails sailed out behind him as 

he ran. 

When children came to him on business 
in the Executive Office, as they sometimes 
did, he listened to them with the same 
courtesy accorded their elders, never deny- 
ing their requests on account of their 
youth. Those who criticized the Presi- 
dent's merciful unwillingness to impose the 
death penalty, dreaded to see a woman 
with a child in her arms enter that room. 
They knew she would have a speedy and 
sympathetic hearing. " It was the baby 
that did it, madam," Edward, the colored 
usher, observed to one wife who passed out, 
radiantly tearful. 

Mrs. Lincoln was a Kentuckian, and the 
fact that some of her relatives fought in 
the Southern armies was enough to keep 
gossip busy with rumors of her tacit if not 
open sympathy with the rebellion — gos- 
sip which did her grievous wrong, and 

204 



HIS WIFE AND CHILDREN 

added one more to the daily trials of the 
President. It was a thing of which he 
could take no public notice; but at one 
time he felt constrained to tell several mem- 
bers of the cabinet his side of the story 
then current. " He gave the details with 
frankness and without disguise. . , . 
They did him credit on a subject of scandal 
and abuse," one of them wrote. 

The President's attitude toward his wife 
had something of the paternal in it, al- 
most as though she were a child, under his 
protection. It is said that when President 
Taylor offered to make him Governor of 
Oregon Territory, shortly after the end of 
his term in Congress, Lincoln's refusal was 
largely because of her unwillingness to go 
so far into the wilderness. 

Personally he was singularly indifferent 
to physical surroundings, and neither the 
wilderness, had they gone there, nor the 
stately proportions and practical incon- 
venience of the Executive Mansion when 

205 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

they actually experienced them, affected 
him in the least. But, like many another 
good American husband, it pleased him to 
see his wife enjoying luxury; and in 
March, 1861, the White House must have 
seemed to both of them a very grand home 
indeed. 

During the war, as for many years 
after, the President's family and the busi- 
ness of state were housed in uncongenial 
intimacy. The family lived upstairs in 
the western end of the building, the of- 
fices were in the east end; the state apart- 
ments were below; and visitors and office- 
seekers blocked anterooms and halls; while 
Tad split the ears of cabinet ministers and 
long-suffering clerks, as, with mischief and 
drum, he did what he could to convert this 
" dwelling-place but not a habitation," into 
a real home. 

The Lincolns were the Western-most 
people who had inhabited the White House, 
and were as new to official ceremony as to 

206 






A Presidential Tea Party 



HIS WIFE AND CHILDREN 

stately surroundings. The President, how- 
ever, had his native dignity and his term in 
Congress to fall back upon; while Mrs. 
Lincoln had her woman's wits and that ease 
in fitting into more luxurious surroundings 
which is the birthright of every living crea- 
ture, from protoplasm to potentate. 

On request the State Department fur- 
nished elaborate lists of officials and func- 
tions, along with certain helpful details. 
From that source or elsewhere they were 
advised never to say " Sir " to a titled 
foreigner ; and that " at evening calls of 
diplomats it is well for the President to go 
down." The hour for state dinners was 
set sternly at seven. The family might 
dine at six. A memorandum prescribed 
" dress for gentlemen " as " coat, black 
dress, or ditto blue with bright buttons — 
(never wear frocks)" — which seems to 
press the Lincoln regime back into remote 
picturesqueness. 

With these hints, and their natural good 
207 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

sense, they got on as well as most new ad- 
ministrations. One of the hints was that 
" parties, if given, must be entirely in- 
formal or accidental." After Mrs. Lin- 
coln had been installed about a year she 
determined to ignore this rule, and sent out 
invitations for a party which was not at 
all " accidental." Society was rocked to 
its center, and the local papers printed col- 
umns detailing the elegance of everybody's 
manners and costumes, not forgetting the 
foreigners who must never be addressed as 
" Sir," and ending with an inventory of 
the sugar ornaments on the supper table. 
Notes made in the house were less sac- 
charine. " Half the city is jubilant at be- 
ing invited, while the other half is furious 
at being left out in the cold. It was a 
very respectable, if not brilliant success. 
Many of the invited guests did not come, 
so the rooms were not at all overcrowded. 
. . . Those who were here (some of them 
having sought and almost begged their in- 

208 



HIS WIFE AND CHILDREN 

vitatlons) will be forever happy in the 
recollection. . . . Suffice it to say that 
the East Room looked very beautiful ; that 
the supper was magnificent, and that when 
all was over, by way of an interesting little 
finale, a couple of the servants, much 
moved by wrath and wine, had a jolly little 
knock-down in the kitchen, damaging in its 
effects to sundry heads and champagne 
bottles. This last item is strictly entre 
nous.'* 

That was the culmination of Mrs. Lin- 
coln's social achievements. The very next 
of these confidential letters, enclosing a 
newspaper account of the great party, 
adds : " Since then one of the President's 
little boys has been so sick as to absorb all 
his attention." From that time on pri- 
vate and public sorrow put an end to all 
except the formal and official entertaining. 

The traditional state dinners and recep- 
tions took place; and there was music in 
the summer on the White House lawn ; 
14 209 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

when occasionally the noise of heavy guns 
would draw the crowd away from the band 
down to the river's edge to gaze across at 
the Virginia hills. 

The great public receptions were not 
disagreeable to the President, and he 
seemed surprised when people commiserated 
him upon having to endure them. He 
would shake hands with thousands of peo- 
ple, seemingly unconscious of what he was 
doing, murmuring some monotonous salu- 
tation, his eye dim and thoughts far away, 
until a familiar face, or the sight of a lit- 
tle child would focus his attention. 
" Hurrah for Mist' Linthon ! " a small cit- 
izen lisped as he came up, convoyed by 
his proud parent. " Hurrah for Mister 
You ! " the President responded, gathering 
him in his arms, and giving him a mighty 
toss toward the ceiling. 

Many people came primed with a speech 
to deliver, but unless it was compressed into 
the smallest possible space, it never got ut- 

210 



HIS WIFE AND CHILDREN 

terance. If it were brief enough, and 
caught the President's fancy, it received a 
swift answer. One night an elderly gen- 
tleman from Buffalo said, " Up our way 
we believe in God and Abraham Lincoln." 

" My friend, you are more than half 
right ! " was the President's reply as he 
passed him on to the next in line. 

Lincoln had grown to manhood and 
prominence in a period of grave formality 
of manner, in a locality where old Southern 
traditions of good breeding prevailed. 
Dignity was as natural to him as honest 
living or straight thinking. In his audi- 
ences with diplomats he lost nothing in 
comparison with men trained in European 
courts. His natural poise and sense of fit- 
ness made both words and bearing unem- 
barrassed. Yet after complying with all 
the requirements of custom, his kindly wit 
was apt to find outlet. When Lord Lyons 
went to the White House to announce the 
marriage of the Prince of Wales, he made 

211 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

the customary formal speech. The Presi- 
dent answered in like manner ; then, taking 
the bachelor diplomat by the hand, he sup- 
plemented it with a genial, " And now, 
Lord Lyons, go thou and do likewise ! " 

Contrary to popular belief nobody pre- 
sumed to call Lincoln " Abe," or had, since 
he was a boy, " Honest Old Abe " was 
indeed an expression country-wide, but it 
was used in speaking about him, not to 
him. There was that in his bearing, 
friendly as it was, which forbade familiar- 
ity. His own son has told the writer that 
even his mother addressed her husband as 
" Mr. Lincoln." Sometimes in talking to 
men much younger than himself, he called 
them by their first names, but with those 
of his own generation, even intimates of 
his early years, his nearest approach to 
familiarity was in dropping the prefix 
" Mr." In this he followed the well-estab- 
lished custom of the time and place. 

He was as temperate in his speech as in 
212 



HIS WIFE AND CHILDREN 

his appetites. His innate honesty forbade 
his saying things he did not mean, while 
his appreciation of the value of words 
made him differentiate between their use 
and abuse as he would between the use and 
abuse of gold. He was generous, but no 
spendthrift with either. His hearty " I 
am glad to see you," accompanied by a 
warm handclasp and his smile, meant more 
than another man's extravagant compli- 
ments. If he was not glad he did not say 
so. " Good morning," or " What can I 
do for you?" or some equally unperjured 
greeting sufficed. This strict truthfulness 
in little things gives added point to his oc- 
casional vivid statements ; like that to Mr. 
Browning about the first weeks of his ad- 
ministration, or his remark to General 
Schenck that he could find it in his heart to 
pity Satan himself. 

With his w^ealth of sympathy, his con- 
science, and his unflinching sense of jus- 
tice, he was predestined to sorrow. There 

213 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

was in his nature a strain of deep melan- 
choly, a trait not uncommon among the 
pioneers. In his youth, during the years 
when blood pounds fastest, and desires and 
aspiration protest loudest against the stem 
discipline of fact, it came upon him time 
and again; and because he was different 
from his fellows — a finer instrument, re- 
sponding more readily to calls of the spirit 
— it hurt cruelly. "If what I feel were 
equally distributed to the whole human 
family, there would not be one cheerful face 
on the earth." From one so temperate in 
speech, these words mean much. 

By the time he reached middle life the 
sharpness of these attacks had been lived 
down, but a melancholy underlay all his 
moods — even his merriest. He was still 
vibrant to chords of feeling. 

" I believe I feel trouble in the air before 
it comes," he said, entering the room of his 
secretaries to bring news of a military dis- 
aster which had just reached him. 

214 



HIS WIFE AND CHILDREN 

" I am 8uperstitious," he admitted fre- 
quently, but in the next breath was apt to 
give a good and sensible reason for what 
he was pleased to call his superstition. He 
placed enough importance on dreams to 
tell them ; not only his recurrent dream of 
the ship and the dark shore, but others. 
Once he sent a despatch to his wife, advis- 
ing her to put away Tad's pistol, because 
he had had " an ugly dream " about him. 

In unguarded moments he gave way to 
grief with complete unconsciousness. The 
gray, drawn look of his face in mental 
pain ; his " ghostlike " appearance as he 
walked up and down the room, exclaiming, 
" My God, my God ! what will the country 
sa}^ ? " ; the way the tears ran unheeded 
down his cheeks while he inspected the 
Monitor and lived again in imagination 
that memorable battle ; his stumbling steps 
and hands pressed to his heart as he went 
from McClellan's headquarters, heedless of 
the sentinel's salute, on learning of Col- 

215 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

onel Baker's death — betrayed how com- 
pletely he forgot himself in grief. 

Fortunately his joy was as spontaneous 
as a child's. No amount of experience 
made him callous to either happiness or 
pain. " I myself will telegraph the news 
to General Meade ! " he cried, seizing his 
hat when Secretary Welles brought word 
that Vicksburg had fallen. Then he 
stopped, his face beaming, caught Welles's 
hand and almost embracing him cried, 
" What can we do for the Secretary of the 
Navy for this glorious intelligence? He 
is always giving us good news. I cannot 
tell you my joy over the result. It is 
great, Mr. Welles, it is great ! " 

Yet such was his self-control that he 
could make his face a mask when he saw 
fit, and it was not often that casual vis- 
itors realized the depth of his feeling. One 
secret of his success had been his power of 
inspiring confidence in his followers. One 
duty of his high office he felt to be keeping 

216 



HIS WIFE AND CHILDREN 

up the spirits of his countrymen during the 
dark hours of war. He had need of his 
great physical endurance, and all his self- 
control. Many were the sleepless nights 
he passed after that first Sunday when he 
remained in his office until dawn, listening 
to the excited tales of those who had wit- 
nessed sights and sounds of the battle of 
Bull Run. 

His was the faith which moves moun- 
tains. He could even extract a bitter com- 
fort from sad news. Being told of heavy 
firing in the direction of Knoxville, at a 
time when he was very anxious, he said 
that anything which showed that General 
Burnside was not overwhelmed, was cheer- 
ing. " Like Sallie Carter, when she heard 
one of her children cry, he could say, 
* there goes one of my young ones, not 
dead yet, bless the Lord ! ' " 

He wore his greatness so naturally that 
he could afford to jest. Living by the 
same rule in matters great and small, 

217 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

whether signing an emancipation procla- 
mation or attending to the trifling demands 
of a child, he did not have to put on added 
solemnity for great occasions, and he gath- 
ered what comfort and relief he could from 
the flickering bits of humor that crossed 
his path. 

Although wanting in the language of 
gallantry, he was not incapable of turning 
a neat compliment. The artist Carpenter 
has told of one which would have pressed 
Chesterfield hard. An enthusiastic lady 
gave the President an entirely superfluous 
bouquet. The situation was momentarily 
embarrassing, but " with no appearance 
of discomposure, he stooped down, took 
the flowers, and looking from them into the 
sparkling eyes and radiant face of the 
lady, said, with a gallantry I was unpre- 
pared for, ' Really, madam, if you give 
them to me, and they are mine, I think I 
cannot possibly make so good a use of them 
as to present them to you in return ! ' " 

218 



HIS WIFE AND CHILDREN 

He was the most abstemious of men. 
Not that he remained on principle a total 
abstainer as he was during part of his early 
life ; but he never cared for wines or liquors 
of any sort, and never used tobacco. 
Judge Lawrence Weldon once overheard 
Douglas trying to ridicule him on this 
point. 

"What! You a temperance man?" 
Douglas asked. 

" No," drawled Lincoln, with a smile. 
" I 'm not a temperance man ; but I 'm 
temperate in this — to wit — I don't 
drink." 

At table he ate sparingly, without seem- 
ing to know what he was eating. When 
Mrs. Lincoln was away he sometimes ab- 
sentmindedly omitted the formality of din- 
ing altogether. To some visitors who 
apologized for sending in their cards at 
the dinner hour, he replied : 

" It makes no difference. When my 
wife is away I just browse around." 

219 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

It was the company, not the meat, 
which interested him. Carl Schurz, for 
whom he had a strong liking, once asked 
leave to present his German brother-in- 
law, a young merchant from Hamburg. 
Mr. Lincoln told him to bring him the next 
day about lunch time, adding casually that 
there would be something to eat. Schurz 
had no little difficulty in quieting his 
guest's trepidation. His assertion that 
there would be no court etiquette or for- 
mality whatever was too wild for the for- 
eigner's belief. When he found ■ himself 
greeted like an old friend, and the three 
sat down alone to luncheon, he pulled him- 
self out of his stupefaction, and answered 
entertainingly the many questions about 
Hamburg with which his host plied him. 
The meal ended in anecdotes and laughter ; 
and as they left the White House the 
young German was vainly trying to find 
words in which to express his puzzled ad- 
miration for the man who had risen from 

220 



HIS WIFE AND CHILDREN 

peasant to ruler, and, with so much dig- 
nity, remained so unconscious of self. 

To his two secretaries he was the em- 
bodiment of kindness and friendliness. 
For a time they occupied a room In the 
Executive Mansion, and saw him, literally, 
day and night. Like boys, they had their 
own names for him. " The Tycoon " was 
their favorite, with " The Ancient " a close 
second. When their admiration passed all 
bounds they gave him the comprehensive 
title, " The American." 

" What a man it is," wrote John Hay 
in his diary, after detailing a nocturnal 
visit of the President, who came with a 
volume of Hood in his hand, to read them 
something which struck his fancy. " Oc- 
cupied all day with matters of vast mo- 
ment, deeply anxious about the fate of the 
greatest army in the w^orld, with his own 
fame and fortune hanging on the events of 
the passing hour, he has such wealth of 
simple bonhomie and good fellowship that 

221 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

he gets out of bed and perambulates the 
house in his shirt to find us that we may 
share with him the fun of poor Hood's lit- 
tle conceits." 

Personally Lincoln was very brave. 
When he visited the army at the front and 
reviewed the troops, he was the cause of 
much anxiety to the commanders, because 
his tall figure, made taller still by the 
" stove-pipe " hat he habitually wore, ren- 
dered him a conspicuous and unmistakable 
target for the enemy. When General 
Early's troops came within a few miles of 
Washington he was actually under fire at 
Fort Stevens, so interested in watching de- 
velopments that he was quite impatient at 
being made to leave his exposed position. 
General Butler confessed that no one ever 
gave him a fright equal to Lincoln, be- 
cause of his calm disregard for personal 
safetj". 

" The Commander-in-Chief of the Army 
must n't show any cowardice in the pres- 

222 



HIS WIFE AND CHILDREN 

ence of his soldiers, however he may feel," 
was his laughing reply. 

But no instance of his complete forget- 
fulness of danger equals his entry into 
Richmond, when he walked for two miles 
or more, practically unescorted, through 
streets of silent houses behind whose closed 
blinds despairing women and sad-eyed men 
looked on the joy-crazed negroes who sur- 
rounded him, calling down blessings upon 
his head with all the fervent picturesque- 
ness of their race. 

Lincoln's ceremonious uncovering in an- 
swer to the sweeping obeisance of a bent 
and grizzled negro whose twisted limbs 
and white hairs betokened the labors and 
injustice heaped upon the race, is one 
of the most impressive and dramatic in- 
cidents of the war. But to the white on- 
lookers in the houses, inflamed by passion 
and made bitter by defeat, it must have 
borne a different aspect. A bullet might 
very easily have sped from behind one of 

223 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

those forbidding shutters. To the honor 
of Richmond, if the temptation came, it 
was thrust aside, and the Commander-in- 
Chief of its conquering host passed in 
safety into the house lately occupied by the 
President of the Confederacy. 

The reverie into which he fell as he 
rested in Jefferson Davis's own chair was 
so serious and so deep that the aide on 
duty did not dare address him. When 
General Weitzel, in command of the con- 
quered city, reported, and together the 
two passed through the burned and dev- 
astated portions of the town to Libby 
Prison and Castle Thunder, where memory 
would have its way, the general turned to 
him and asked what he was to do about 
the conquered people. 

Lincoln's reply was that he did not wish 
to give orders upon that subject. " But," 
he said, in his kindly way, " if I were in 
your place, I 'd let 'em up easy. Let 'em 
up easy." 

224! 



HIS WIFE AND CHILDREN 

Walt Whitman, seeing the President 
drive by seated beside his wife, his carriage 
drawn by " only two horses, and they noth- 
ing extra," thought Lincoln a very ordi- 
nary-looking man. He probably thouglit 
so himself, but it is doubtful if he was as 
indifferent to his personal appearance as 
we have been led to suppose. There were 
too many passing references in his speeches 
and in conversation, to warrant the belief 
that he gave it no thought. One or more 
of his stories refer to it ; he spoke of it at 
least twice in his debates with Douglas ; he 
said to ]\Ir. Chittenden that though he 
" did not set up for a beauty " he thought 
the people of the South would not find him 
so ugly or so black as he had been painted. 
He told John Hay of his dream in which 
a party of plain people began to comment 
on his appearance, saying he was a very 
common-looking man, to which he replied, 
" the Lord prefers common-looking peo- 
ple, that is the reason he makes so many 
15 225 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

of them." His shuddering comment on a 
portrait of himself was that it was " hor- 
ribly like." And there is the final bit of 
evidence that he took the advice of a little 
girl, a total stranger, who wrote to him 
during the campaign, suggesting with 
childish candor that he would look better 
if he wore whiskers. 

We know that he was proud of, or at 
least interested in, his great height, and 
took a boyish delight in measuring himself 
with any exceptionally tall man he met — 
to the astonishment, and sometimes to the 
deep embarrassment of the latter ; and that 
when he had a chance to exhibit his strength 
of arm — how far he could throw, or how 
clean and deep a cut he could make with 
an ax — he seized the opportunity, and 
showed an ingenuous pride in the excellence 
of his performance. 

The probability is that he was fully 
aware of the worst aspect of his personal 
appearance, and regretted it; and had no 

226 



HIS WIFE AND CHILDREN 

notion of its best. He was a huge spare 
man, slightly stooping, who walked with 
the peculiar slow woods-and-fields move- 
ment of the Western pioneer ; and who sat, 
as tall people have to sit, on chairs made 
for shorter folk, not erect, but disposing of 
their long limbs as best they may. A 
sculptor who made most careful measure- 
ments and studies from photographs, tells 
us that, from a sculptor's point of view, 
Lincoln's proportions were quite perfect. 
So mucli for the frame. It was the indwell- 
ing spirit which transformed it and baf- 
fled description. When sitting withdrawn 
and musing, one saw only a sad sallow man, 
on whom the clothes hung loosely. In the 
glow and excitement of public speaking he 
was singularly handsome — at times seemed 
almost inspired. When he looked into the 
eyes of a fellow being in trouble, he had 
the most tenderly sympathetic face in the 
world. 

My father strongly denied that Lincoln 
227 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

was careless in his dress. He said that 
Lincoln's clothes were always scrupulously 
neat, and were in accord with his means and 
his surroundings. Reminiscences of the 
period before his Presidency describe him 
as wearing a short-waisted black dress coat, 
and trousers not too long. The West was 
even less rigid and progressive than the 
East in matters of costume, and at that 
period we were not yet far away from the 
days when the cut of coat which is now a 
badge of servitude before six p. m. and of 
emancipation after that hour, was the con- 
servative garment by daylight for all men 
free, white, and over twenty-one. 

The gentleman who met Mr. Lincoln 
when he went to deliver the Cooper Insti- 
tute speech tells how he accompanied him 
to his room at the hotel, and saw him open 
his grip-sack and shake out a new suit of 
black broadcloth, which though carefully 
packed, had become a mass of wrinkles. 
He hung it up, trusting optimistically that 

228 



HIS WIFE AND CHILDREN 

the creases would disappear before lie had 
to put it on. There is something rather 
pathetic in the picture of this great man 
doing his inadequate best to appear suit- 
ably clad before his Eastern audience. 
The idea of sending his suit to be pressed 
never crossed his mind. That was not the 
way things were managed in his simple 
household. 

He never forgot the dignity of his of- 
fice, but he could not take its pomp and 
ceremony seriously. That it could be ex- 
pected to interfere with his simple and un- 
affected demeanor as an individual, he re- 
fused to admit. He wished to be free to 
come and go as he chose. His axiom that 
" he who would be no slave must consent to 
have no slave " applied in his own mind, as 
truly to himself as to mankind in the ab- 
stract. His propensity for roaming about 
Lafayette Square, or between the old War 
Department and the White Llouse, late at 
night, alone, or accompanied only by one 

229 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

of his secretaries, filled those who knew of 
the habit with dismay. He admitted that 
he ran a certain risk of assassination, but 
contended that the only way to guard 
against that effectively, was to shut him- 
self up in an iron box, where he could not 
possibly perform the duties of President. 
Any measure short of that seemed to him 
useless. " Why put up the bars," he said, 
" when the fence is down all around? " 

The Secretary of War proposed that the 
Adjutant-General be detailed to attend 
him. He answered with characteristic 
courtesy and decision : 

My dear Sir: On reflection I think it 
will not do, as a rule, for the Adjutant-Gen- 
eral to attend me wherever I go; not that I 
have any objection to his presence, but that 
it would be an uncompensating encumbrance 
both to him and to me. When it shall occur 
to me to go anywhere, I wish to be free to go 
at once, and not to have to notify the Adju- 
tant-General and wait till he can get ready. 

2S0 



HIS WIFE AND CHILDREN 

It is better, too, for tlie public service that he 
shall give his time to the business of his 
office, and not to personal attendance on me. 
While I thank you for the kindness of the 
suggestion, my view of the matter is as I have 
stated. 

When it was finally decided that a guard 
must be maintained at the White House, 
and an escort of cavalry must accompany 
him on his daily drive, he submitted, 
though not without humorous protest. 

" Why, Mrs. Lincoln and I cannot hear 
ourselves talk for the clatter of their sabers 
and spurs ; and some of them appear to be 
new hands and very awkward, so that I am 
more afraid of being shot by the accidental 
discharge of a carbine or revolver, than of 
any attempt upon my life by a roving 
squad of ' Jeb ' Stuart's cavalry." 

A guard was, however, only a common 
precaution, especially during the summer 
months, when Lincoln rode or drove out 
through wooded roads to spend the nights 

231 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

at the Soldiers' Home, returning to the Ex- 
ecutive Mansion in the early morning. He 
acknowledged this, and then proceeded 
with his usual artless democracy to turn 
official etiquette topsy-turvy by haling 
General Meade out of the War Department 
to be presented to the obscure captain of 
his new guard, on the simple ground that 
both were from Pennsylvania. Stanton 
and the rest might post guards all around 
the lot, but no power on earth could 
prevent his treating them like men and 
brothers. 

He invited the captain to share his early 
and frugal breakfast, and the captain 
thought him the kindest and pleasantest 
gentlemen he ever met. " He never spoke 
unkindly of any one, and always spoke of 
the rebels as ' those Southern gentlemen.' " 

The captain used to knock at his door at 
half past six or seven in the morning, and 
usually found him reading, though some- 
times still busy with his toilet. " All 

232 



HIS WIFE AND CHILDREN 

right. Just wait a moment, while I repair 
damages," he called one morning, when 
caught in the act of sewing on a " vital 
button." 

As a stickler for official ceremony Lin- 
coln was really hopeless. He took most 
unpardonable liberties with established 
custom, and disconcerting short cuts to re- 
sults. Not only would he sew on his own 
buttons, or bring a general downstairs to 
be introduced to a captain if he chose ; 
but more than once, in his anxiety to 
get first-hand and correct information in 
the military and diplomatic service, he in- 
vited subordinates to report directly to him 
instead of through regular official channels. 
No wonder men whose minds worked only 
inside a binding of red tape were scandal- 
ized. 



233 



XII 

THOSE IN AUTHORITY 

LINCOLN took his Presidential rivals 
into his cabinet, and compelled them 
to be his friends ; but even his genial soul 
could not warm them toward each other. 
Seward and Chase were antagonistic. 
Stanton and Welles were not in accord. 
Cameron, Lincoln's first Secretary of War, 
proved insubordinate. Seward meddled 
with the Navy and the Law, according to 
the heads of those Departments. Bates 
had little patience with Stanton. Welles 
thought Chase's financial policy all wrong. 
Blair seemed to all of them aggressively 
mindful of family interests. And each be- 
gan by believing it his moral duty to help 

234 



THOSE IN AUTHORITY 

neutralize the great national blunder wliich 
had elected Lincoln by guiding and direct- 
ing him with all the brains at his command. 

It could not be called a harmonious com- 
pany, yet the earnest patriotism in the 
heart of each, and Lincoln's elastic good 
nature, held them together fairly well. 
Newspapers printed sensational accounts 
of quarrels, and rumors of wholesale cab- 
inet changes ; but they continued to work 
together for the country's good, and 
changes, when they occurred, were neither 
wholesale nor sensational. 

Lincoln dominated them from the first, 
though it was long before they found it out. 
As late as January, 1862, Attorney-Gen- 
eral Bates wrote in his diary: 

" There is no quarrel among us, but an 
absolute want of continuity of intelligence, 
purpose and action. In truth, it is not an 
administration, but the separate and dis- 
jointed action of seven independent offi- 
cers, each one ignorant of what his col- 

235 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

leagues are doing. . . . The President is 
an excellent man, and in the main wise, but 
he lacks will and purpose, and I greatly 
fear he has not the power to command." 

Yet even before they were actually his 
advisers he began his sway. Two days 
before the inauguration, Seward, suspect- 
ing an undue leaning toward the more rad- 
ical element in the party, attempted to 
withdraw. Lincoln waited until the in- 
augural procession was forming in the 
street, and then sent him a short note, re- 
fusing to release him, remarking as he 
handed it to his private secretary to be 
copied: 

" I cannot afford to let Seward take the 
first trick." 

In Lincoln's mind their mutual relations 
were clear. The cabinet was not a re- 
gency, but a board of advisers. Questions 
of administration he settled with each de- 
partment separately. Questions of policy 
he discussed with his cabinet ; but he rarely 

236 



THOSE IN AUTHORITY 

asked their vote; and on several occasions 
his final decision was against their almost 
unanimous judgment. Yet he was patient 
to hear advice, and candid to admit the 
force of argument. When he had to give 
a decision adverse to the majority, he gave 
it, not with the pride of authority, but as 
though constrained by public duty. 

Lincoln's modification of Seward's de- 
spatches at the time of the Trent affair, 
and his magnanimous handling of that gen- 
tleman when in a moment of madness Sew- 
ard intimated that Lincoln was a failure 
as President, offered to do his thinking for 
him, and proposed to end the budding re- 
bellion by bringing on war Avith most of 
the military powers of Europe, is an old 
story. It is easy to imagine the frigid 
note with which Washington would have 
dismissed such a minister, or the impetuos- 
ity with which Jackson would have thun- 
dered him out of his cabinet. Lincoln 
answered in a few quiet words, entirely de- 

237 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

void of passion, pointing out that it was for 
him and no one else to make final decisions, 
adding, " I wish, and suppose I am en- 
titled to have, the advice of all my cabinet." 
Seward was great enough to comprehend 
his generosity, and so far as is known, the 
matter was never alluded to between them. 

When Secretary Cameron sent out a re- 
port in favor of arming negroes for mili- 
tary service, which he knew was at that 
time contrary to Lincoln's policy, Lincoln 
showed no anger. He merely recalled the 
advance copies and asked him to modify 
the order. For a time the incident seemed 
forgotten, but one day Cameron was made 
Minister to Russia, and there was a new 
Secretary of War. 

It is said that on the death of Cardinal 
Mazarin Louis XIV called his cabinet 
together and told them that for the future 
he intended to be his own prime minister. 
Lincoln made no unnecessary statements, 
but gradually it dawned upon the cabinet 

238 



THOSE IN AUTHORITY 

that he was master. Seward was the first 
to find it out. " There is but one vote in 
the cabinet, and that is cast by the Presi- 
dent," he wrote some weeks after his unbe- 
lievable Memorandum of April 1, 1861. 

This Westerner whom they had thouglit 
to rule had a kingly way of his own. For 
all his simple manners he gave orders like 
one born to power. " You will hear all 
they may choose to say, and report it to 
me. You will not assume to definitely con- 
summate anything," he instructed Seward 
when the latter went to meet the commis- 
sioners of the Confederacy at Hampton 
Roads. And when the war was nearing 
its close he sent word to Grant : " You are 
not to decide, discuss, or confer upon any 
political question. Such questions the 
President holds in his own hands, and will 
submit them to no military conferences or 
conventions. Meanwhile you are to press 
to the utmost your military advantages." 

When he read his cabinet the prelimi- 
239 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

nary Proclamation of Emancipation, he 
told them flatly that he had resolved upon 
the step, and had not called them together 
to ask their advice. 

No descendant of a hundred kings could 
be more sure of his right to command. 
Even Louis could not have been more dic- 
tatorial or emphatic ; but his methods were 
characteristically his own. 

In 1864 when intrigues within the cabi- 
net reached a pitch that he could no longer 
ignore, he read his assembled advisers the 
following impressive little lecture : 

" I must myself be the judge how long 
to retain in, and when to remove any of 
you from, his position. It would greatly 
pain me to discover any of you endeavor- 
ing to procure another's removal, or in any 
way to prejudice him before the public. 
Such endeavor would be a wrong to me; 
and much worse, a wrong to the country. 
My wish is that on this subject, no remark 
be made, nor question asked, by any of 

240 



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THOSE IN AUTHORITY 

you, here or elsewhere, now or hereafter." 
At another time an intrigue set on 
foot by some friends of Chase, resulted in 
such criticism of Seward by Republican 
senators that Seward sent the President 
his resignation. Lincoln called the cen- 
sorious senators, and all of the cabinet, ex- 
cept Seward, to a meeting at the White 
House, neither side knowing that the other 
was to be present. In the unexpected 
face-to-face council a very warm discussion 
took place, and Chase found himself; with 
the rest of the cabinet, defending Seward. 
To save his consistency he next day 
brought the President his own resignation, 
which was accepted with unflattering alac- 
rity. 

A moment later a friend entering the 
room found Mr. Lincoln alone, regarding 
the paper with an indescribably whimsical 
expression. 

" Now I can ride," he said. " I have a 

pumpkin in each end of my bag ; " and 
16 241 



ABRAHAIVI LINCOLN 

forthwith sat down and wrote identical 
notes to Seward and Chase, asking them 
to withdraw their resignations. 

Lincoln was well satisfied with this day's 
work, by which he had made the critics 
thrash out their differences in his presence, 
and had saved the services of both his able 
ministers to the country. " I do not see 
how it could have been done better," he 
said. " I am sure it was right. If I had 
yielded to that storm and dismissed Seward 
the thing would all have slumped over one 
way, and we should have been left with a 
scanty handful of supporters. When 
Chase sent in his resignation I saw the 
game was in my own hands, and I put it 
through." 

The cabinet sessions were absolutely in- 
formal. Regular meetings were held at 
noon on Tuesdays and Fridays. When 
special meetings were necessary the Presi- 
dent or Secretary of State called the mem- 
bers together. There was a long table in 

242 



THOSE IN AUTHORITY 

the cabinet room, but it was not used as a 
council board. The President generally 
stood up and walked about. The others 
came in and took their seats according to 
convenience, staying through the session, 
or stating their business and departing, as 
pressure of work demanded. Sometimes 
the meeting was opened by a remark or an 
anecdote by the President ; of tener by the 
relation of some official or personal hap- 
pening to one of his advisers. 

The many stories of strained relations 
between Lincoln and Stanton are capable 
of a gentler interpretation than is usually 
given them. Stanton was undoubtedly 
prejudiced against Lincoln in the begin- 
ning. This was perhaps the result of an 
unquiet conscience, since he had treated 
Mr. Lincoln with scant courtesy in the 
McCormick Reaper case some years 

before. 

Simon Cameron told my father that 
when he was made Minister to Russia Lin- 

243 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

coin asked whom he wished for his succes- 
sor in the War Department. H^e answered, 
" Stanton." 

" Well," said Lincoln, " go and ask 
Stanton whether he will take it." 

On his way Mr. Cameron met Secre- 
tary Chase, and told his errand. Chase, 
who had a weakness for feeling that he was 
pulling the strings and making the pup- 
pets dance, said, " Don't go to Stanton's 
office. Come with me to my office, and 
send for Stanton to come there, and we 
will talk it over together." They did so, 
and Stanton agreed to accept the post, 
possibly in the same spirit of hostile pa- 
triotism with which he had entered on his 
duties under Buchanan. But there was a 
rugged honesty in him which could not fail 
to respond to Lincoln's qualities. He was 
as impetuous and explosive as the Presi- 
dent was slow to anger ; but his bluster was 
a habit of speech quite as much as a state 
of mind, and Lincoln bore no malice. 

244 



THOSE IN AUTHORITY 

" Did Stanton say I was a d — d fool? " 
Lincoln asked when Mr. Lovejoy came in 
bewildered rage to report an interview the 
President had authorized him to hold with 
his Secretary of War. 

"He did, sir!" 

The President bent his head, then looked 
up with his winning smile and remarked, 
" If Stanton says I am a d — d fool, I must 
be one, for he is nearly always right. I 
will slip over and see him." The point of 
this and similar stories is that Lincoln 
kept his temper, refused to air family dif- 
ferences, official or personal, in public, 
and that after " slipping over to see him," 
the matter was arranged. 

" This woman, dear Stanton, is a little 
smarter than she looks to be " — that mes- 
sage and even his note about Julius 
CcTsar's hair, are not the kind a man sends 
where relations are seriously strained. 

Several members of the cabinet were af- 
flicted with undue seriousness. When the 

245 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

President endorsed a paper, " Referred to 
Mars and Neptune," the heads of the War 
and Navy Departments looked askance. 
When they heard him laugh only a 
moment before turning to consider the 
weighty matter of the Emancipation Proc- 
lamation, they felt that something was 
radically wrong. They could scarcely 
condone Lincoln's joking; and when Stan- 
ton tried to be mildly funny they instantly 
scented a scandal. Secretary Welles con- 
fided to his diary : " The President still 
remains with the army . . . Stanton . . , 
remarked that it was quite pleasant to 
have the President away. That he 
(Stanton) was much less annoyed. 
Neither Seward nor myself responded." 

Lincoln's remark that he " had n't much 
influence with this administration," and 
that he was " only the lead-horse who 
must n't kick over the traces," was his 
way of saying that if he delegated powers 
and duties to his cabinet ministers, it was 

246 



THOSE IN AUTHORITY 

only fair to refrain from interfering while 
they carried them out. " It is a good 
thing for individuals that there is a Gov- 
ernment to shove over their acts upon. 
No man's shoulders are broad enough to 
bear what must be," he said ; and to critics 
of the administration he would answer : 

" Suppose all you owned was in gold, 
and the gold had been put into the hands 
of Blondin to carry across the Niagara 
River on a rope — would you shake the 
rope and keep shouting contradictory ad- 
vice ; or would you hold your breath and 
your tongue, and keep hands off until he 
was safely over? The Government is 
carrying an immense load and doing the 
best it can. Don't badger us. We '11 get 
you safe across." 

He never lost his sense of proportion. 
He used to tell a story of a pilot on a 
Western river, who was using every bit of 
his skill and vigilance to keep the boat in 
the narrow channel, when he felt a tug at 

247 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

his coat, and heard a boy cry, " Say, Mr. 
Captain, say ! I wish you 'd stop your 
boat a minute, I 've lost my apple over- 
board." And he had another story about 
a steamboat with a " five-foot boiler and a 
seven-foot whistle " which had to stop 
stock-still every time the engineer blew a 
blast. 

Criticism which took no more account of 
values worried him little. " I '11 do the 
very best I can," he said — " the very best 
I know how. And I mean to keep doing so 
till the end. If the end brings me out all 
right what is said against me won't amount 
to anything. If the end brings me out 
wrong, ten angels swearing I was right 
would make no difference." 

Senators seemed to consider themselves 
specially privileged in the line of criticism. 

" I fear I have made Senator Wade my 
enemy for life," he said ruefully one day. 
" He was here just now, urging me to dis- 
miss Grant, and in response to something 

248 



THOSE IN AUTHORITY 

he said I answered, ' Senator, that reminds 
me of a story.' He said in a petulant way, 
' It is with you all story, story ! You are 
letting this countr}'^ go to hell with your 
stories, sir ! You are not more than a mile 
away from it this minute.' " 

" What did you answer? " 

" I asked good-naturedly if that was 
not just about the distance from here to 
the Senate Chamber. He was very angry, 
grabbed up his hat and went off." 

It is said that the aptness of the retort 
worked its way through the senator's anger 
before he reached that place " a mile 
away," and that he turned back to apolo- 
gize. The President's callers were not 
always so reasonable ; and he was sin- 
cerely distressed if any one left him in ill 
humor. 

With Senator Sumner his relations were 
outwardly most cordial, though he was not 
insensible to the spirit of criticism which 
underlay the smiling intercourse. " I 

249 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 



5 



have never had much to do with bishops 
he said once, " but, do you know — Sum- 
ner is my idea of a bishop." 

Sumner was troubled by what he called 
" the slow working of Lincoln's mind " ; 
yet he was not always quick to catch the 
President's meaning. Hamilton Fish told 
my father about calling upon the President 
in Sumner's company when curiosity was 
rife over the destination of General Burn- 
side's expedition against Roanoke Island. 
Mr. Sumner began asking questions. 

" Well," said the President, " I am not 
a military man, and of course I cannot tell 
about these matters — and indeed, if I did 
know, the interests of the public service 
require that I should not divulge them. 
But," he added, rising and sweeping his 
long hand over a map of the North Caro- 
lina coast which hung in a corner, " now 
see here. Here are a large number of in- 
lets, and I should think a fleet might per- 
haps get in there somewhere. And if they 

250 



THOSE IN AUTHORITY 

were to get in there, don't you think our 
boys would be likely to cut up some flip- 
flaps? I think they would." 

Mr. Fish turned the conversation. As 
they left the White House Sumner ex- 
pressed impatience at the President's reti- 
cence. " Why," said his companion. 
" He told you where Burnside was going ! 
He wanted to satisfy your curiosity, but of 
course he could not make an official decla- 
ration. I think you ought to be well 
pleased that he was so frank." 

" Well, Governor, who has been abusing 
me in the Senate to-day?" Lincoln asked 
Senator Morrill as the latter came into his 
office. The Senator protested. 

" Mr. President, I hope none of us abuse 
you knowingly and wilfully." 

" Oh, well," he said, " I don't mean that. 
Personally you are all very kind — but I 
know we do not all agree as to what this 
administration should do and how it ought 
to be done. ... I do not know but that 

251 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

God has created some one man great 
enough to comprehend the whole of this 
stupendous crisis from beginning to end, 
and endowed him with sufficient wisdom to 
manage and direct it. I confess I do not 
fully understand and foresee it all. But I 
am placed here where I am obliged to the 
best of my poor ability to deal with it. 
And that being the case, I can only go 
just as fast as I can see how to go." 

" That," continued Mr. Morrill, " was 
the way he saw this thing — as a stupen- 
dous movement, which he watched and upon 
which he acted as he might best do when 
in his judgment tlie opportune moment 
came. . . . He saw that in his dealings 
with it he must be backed by immense 
forces ; and to this end it was his policy to 
hold the nation true to the general aim. 
. . . He moderated, guided, controlled, or 
pushed ahead as he saw his opportunity. 
He was the great balance-wheel which held 
the ship true to her course." 

252 



THOSE IN AUTHORITY 

It required all his wisdom, all his firm- 
ness, all his tact. He must maintain prin- 
ciples, and not make enemies. A hiirh of- 
ficlal came to him in a towering rage, but 
went away perfectly satisfied. " I sup- 
pose you had to make large concessions? " 
the President was asked. " Oh, no," was 
the answer. " I did not concede anything. 
You have heard how the Illinois farmer 
disposed of the log that was too wet to 
burn, too big to haul away, and too knotty 
to split? He plowed around it. Well, 
that is the way I got rid of Governor 
Blank. I plowed around him. But it 
took three mortal hours ; and I was afraid 
every minute that he would find me out ! " 

Lincoln's loyalty and fairness made him 
keep unsuccessful generals in command 
long after the patience of impatient people 
was exhausted. " I think Grant has 
hardly a friend left, except myself," he re- 
marked, before the fall of VIcksburg justi- 
fied the waiting. After VIcksburg fell the 

253 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

President sent Grant a letter which showed 
that he too had had his moments of ques- 
tioning — and also how heartily and grace- 
fully he could say, " You were right and I 
was wrong." 

" My dear General : I do not remem- 
ber that you and I ever met personally. I 
write this now as a grateful acknowledg- 
ment for the almost inestimable service you 
have done the country. I wish to say a 
word further " ; then, summing up the 
various plans that the general had tried in 
the course of his siege, including the last 
one which ended in victory, he continued, 
" When you got below and took Port Gib- 
son, Grand Gulf, and vicinity, I thought 
you should go down the river and join 
General Banks, and when you turned north- 
ward, east of the Big Black, I feared it was 
a mistake. I now wish to make the per- 
sonal acknowledgment that you were right 
and I was wrong." 

The President knew that a change in 
254 



THOSE IN AUTHORITY 

commanders always involved more tlian the 
mere risk of " swapping horses while cross- 
ing a stream." There was tlie troublesome 
question of finding a better horse. Sena- 
tor Wade, who was not the most patient 
of men, urged him to supplant McClcllan. 

" Well," said the President, " put your- 
self in my place for a moment. If I 
relieve McClellan whom shall I put in com- 
mand? Who, of all the men, is to super- 
sede him.? " 

" Why," said Wade, " anybody." 

" Wade," replied Mr. Lincoln, with 
weary resignation, " anybody will do for 
you, but not for me. I must have some- 
hodyr 

He realized that more than mere fighting 
qualities had to be borne in mind. The 
multifarious details of keeping an army 
in good physical and moral condition — 
from the prompt delivery of rations to 
good regimental music — and the fact 
that the lack of one single small item, like 

9>^5 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

horse-shoe nails, might cripple a whole 
corps and lose a battle, was summed up 
in his quaint way, when, discussing the 
qualities of various generals in the field, 
he said, 

" Now there is Joe Hooker. He can 
fight. I think that is pretty well estab- 
lished — but whether he can ' keep tav- 
ern ' for a large army is not so sure." 

The heart-sickening list of military rep- 
utations that began in promise and ended 
in defeat, dragged on, saddening and 
wearying him. His inflexible sense of jus- 
tice left him not even the satisfaction of 
wrath, for he knew that none of these men 
failed willingly. 



256 



XIII 

DAILY RECEPTIONS OF THE PLAIN PEOPLE 

SECRETARY WELLES kept an 
Interesting and voluminous diary. 
In it he wrote: 

It is an infirmity of the President that 
he permits the little newsmongers to come 
around him and be intimate; and in this he 
is encouraged by Seward, who does the same, 
and even courts the corrupt and the vicious, 
which the President does not. He has great 
inquisitiveness. Likes to hear all the politi- 
cal gossip as much as Seward. But the Presi- 
dent is honest, sincere, and confiding. . . . 

Fully three-quarters of Lincoln's time 
was indeed given up to seeing people, and 
the " little newsmongers " played a not 
17 257 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

unimportant part in his success. He had 
no time for reading newspapers. He soon 
gave up all attempts to do so ; yet it was 
imperative that he should know the drift 
of thought and feeling all over the coun- 
try. His private secretaries, bringing him 
their daily digest of news, marveled to find 
him already so well informed. The secret 
lay in these interminable interviews. With 
prominent men from all sections coming 
to receive or impart information, and the 
" plain people," as he liked to call them, 
coming to him on all sorts of errands, there 
was hardly a subject of public interest not 
touched upon and discussed. His visitors 
supplied all he could have acquired by 
reading, and in addition the element of 
interest or prejudice which each uncon- 
sciously put into his narrative. The Pres- 
ident used to call these interviews his pub- 
lic opinion baths ; and he was much better 
equipped for the task of governing, be- 
cause he understood, in part at least, the 

258 



DAILY RECEPTIONS 

foibles and prejudices of the different lo- 
calities. He had not left his skill in prac- 
tical politics behind hini in Illinois, and he 
knew that upon the cooperation of all these 
people he must finally rely. 

His friends begged him to save himself 
the fatigue of seeing the throngs who came 
on insignificant errands. They reminded 
him that nine out of ten had some favor 
to ask, and that nine-tenths of these he 
could not grant. 

'' They do not want much," he answered,\ 
" and they get very little. Each one con- 
siders his business of great importance, 
and I must gratify them. I know how I 
would feel in their place." At noon, on 
days when the cabinet was not in session, 
the doors were thrown open, and the public 
might enter. 

There was of course some danger in this. 
Insane people and criminals might, indeed 
sometimes did, enter with the rest. But 
the military guard, the ushers, and Lin- 

259 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

coin's secretaries were all on the alert to 
detect them, and acquired great skill in 
handling undesirable visitors. 

" Lunatics and visionaries are here so 
frequently that they cease to be strange 
phenomena," my father wrote. " I find 
the best way is to discuss and decide their 
projects as deliberately as any other mat- 
ter of business." 

The President, having read deeply in 
the book of human nature, was himself 
skilled in detecting hidden signs of false- 
hood and deceit. " They are a swindle," 
the youthful John Hay declared, as he 
announced a delegation from the far 
Souih. " Let them in, they will not swin- 
dle me," quoth the President. 

Men of all sorts with projects of all 
kinds, legitimate or otherwise, came to ask 
for official sanction. These were apt to 
lag behind, hoping for a word alone with 
the President. " Well, my friend, what 
can I do for you ? " he would ask in dis- 

260 



DAILY RECEPTIONS 

concertinglj prompt and public fashion. 
But lie arrogated to himself no right of 
criticism or censure because he was Presi- 
dent, treating all as though the burden 
of proving dishonesty rested upon the 
Government. 

Particularly welcome were the occa- 
sional visits of stalwart mountaineers from 
East Tennessee, whom the President 
greeted like younger brothers. " He is 
one of them, really," wrote John Hay ; " I 
never saw him more at his ease than he is 
with these first-rate patriots of the bor- 
der." 

Sometimes a group of Indians from the 
far West filled the room with gaudy color, 
and Lincoln would air his two or three In- 
dian words, to their stolid amusement. 
Oftener the apartment was somber with 
the mourning garments of women come to 
plead for husbands or fathers in trouble, 
or to ask permission to pass south through 
the military lines. 

261 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

More of the President's visitors were sad 
than happy. Some of them came on er- 
rands that were ridiculous as well as trivial. 
Once a voluble landlady deluged him with 
insistence that he hold up the pay of her 
treasury-clerk lodger until his account was 
settled. 

Though so busy he apparently had leis- 
ure for all, bending a care-lined benignant 
face to listen, grave, courteous, sympa- 
thetic; breaking at times into his sudden 
infectious laugh, referring one to this bu- 
reau and another to that official, to whom 
they should have carried their requests in 
the first place; or scribbling a few words 
on a card which opened vistas of quite 
breathless happiness. 

It pained him to say " No," and it was 
his impulse to keep the conversation on a 
semi-humorous footing where the " No," 
if it must be said, would hurt as little as 
possible. To this end he drew on his fund 
of anecdotes, until almost every account 

262 



DAILY RECEPTIONS 

of an interview at the White House tells of 
the President's smile, and his sympathy, 
and how he told a funny story. 

Sometimes he essayed tlie dangerous ex- 
periment of answering a fool according to 
his folly. A gentleman came to him in 
behalf of a private soldier who hadif 
knocked down his captain. " I tell you 
what I will do. You go up to the Capitol, 
and get Congress to pass a law making it 
legal for a private to knock down his cap- 
tain, and I '11 pardon your man with pleas- 
ure," he said with such waggish earaest- 
ness, and such evident desire to please, 
that both burst out laughing, and the mat- 
ter was dropped. 

He told his cabinet that he found cer- 
tain questions very embarrassing. He re- 
minded himself of a man in Illinois who 
was so annoyed by a pressing creditor that 
he feigned insanity whenever the creditor 
broached the subject. " I," said the Pres- 
ident, " on more than one occasion in this 

26S 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

room, have been compelled to appear very 
mad." 

The few people who had no requests to 
make, usually came to give advice. Min- 
isters seemed to feel themselves as privi- 
leged as Senators in this regard. Mr. Car^ 
penter tells of a clergyman who asked for 
an interview. The President assumed an 
air of patient waiting. There was a mo- 
ment's silence. " I am now ready to hear 
what you have to say," he prompted, as 
the silence continued. The visitor hastily 
disclaimed having anything particular to 
say. He had only come to pay his re- 
spects. " My dear sir ! " the other cried, 
his face lighting up, " I am delighted to 
see you. I thought you had come to 
preach to me ! " 

Singly or in delegations they came for 
that purpose — to show him his duty in 
regard to emancipation, or some other 
matter about which he was not yet ready 
to declare his policy. While courteous, he 

264 



DAILY RECEPTIONS 

absolutely refused to be hurried into a dec- 
laration. " He will not be bullied, even 
by his friends," one of his secretaries 
wrote. 

Others, singly, or in delegations, came to 
pray with him. Respecting their motive, 
and himself deeply religious, he received 
them with unfailing courtesy. A IVIetho- 
dist exhortation, or a Quaker prayer meet- 
ing, might seem inconvenient, even time 
consuming, in the midst of his busy morn- 
ing, but this " Christian without a creed " 
not only reverenced the power to Avhom the 
petition was addressed ; he was grateful for 
the human bond it helped to strengtlien. 
Sometimes, however, he was moved to ask 
questions hard to meet. To one person 
who claimed to bring him a direct com- 
mand from the Almighty, he replied: 

" I hope it will not be irreverent for me 
to say that if it is probable that God 
would reveal his will to others on a point 
so connected with my duty, it might be 

265 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

supposed He would reveal it directly to 



me." 



He had a most disconcerting way of 
pricking bubbles with the point of his 
logic. A committee of rich New Yorkers 
hurried to Washington when the Confeder- 
ate ironclad Merrimac was striking terror 
into hearts along the Atlantic coast, and 
demanded a gun-boat for the protection of 
New York harbor. " Gentlemen," he an- 
swered, " the credit of the Government is 
at a very low ebb. It is impossible under 
present conditions to do what you ask. 
But it seems to me, that if I were half as 
rich as you are reputed to be, and half as 
badly scared as you appear to be, I would 
build a gun-boat and present it to the 
Government." 

When, at long intervals, his patience 
gave way, and he blazed forth in righteous 
wrath, men quailed before him. Editor 
Medill of the Chicago Tribune told of a 
time in 1864 when a call for extra troops 

9.m 



DAILY RECEPTIONS 

drove Chicago to tlic verge of revolt. Her 
quota was 6000 men. She sent a delega- 
tion to ask for a new enrollment, which 
Stanton refused. Lincoln consented to oo 
with the delegation to Stanton's office and 
hear both sides. "I shall never forget," 
said Mr. Medill, " how after sitting in si- 
lence for some time, he suddenly lifted 
his head and turned on us a black and 
frowning face. 

" ' Gentlemen,' he said, in a voice full 
of bitterness, ' after Boston, Chicago has 
been the chief instrument in bringing 
this war on the country. The Northwest 
has opposed the South as the Northeast 
has opposed the South. It is you who 
are largely responsible for making blood 
flow as it has. You called for war until 
we had it. You called for emancipation, 
and I have given it to you. Whatever you 
have asked for you have had. Now you 
come here begging to be let off from the 
call for men which I have made to carry on 

267 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

the war you have demanded. You ought 
to be ashamed of yourselves. I have a 
right to expect better things of you. And 
you, Medill, you are acting hke a coward. 
You and your Tribune have had more in- 
fluence than any paper in the Northwest 
in making this war. You can influence 
great masses, and yet you cry to be spared 
at a moment when your cause is suffering. 
Go home and send us those men ! ' 

" I could n't say anything. It was the 
first time I was ever whipped, and I did n't 
have an answer. We all got up and went 
out, and when the door closed, one of my 
colleagues said, ' Well, gentlemen, the Old 
Man is right. We ought to be ashamed of 
ourselves. Let us never say anything 
about this, but go home and raise the 
men.' " 

It speaks volumes for Lincoln's abso- 
lute justice and for Medill's fairminded- 
ness, that even after the lapse of years, the 
editor could bring himself to tell how 

268 



DAILY RECEPTIONS 

Lincoln called lilni " coward," and admit 
that he was right. 

Usually the President sat out impor- 
tunity in an attitude of patient waiting. 
One summer afternoon General Fry found 
him listening to a common soldier. lie 
looked worn and tired. " Well, my man, 
that may all be so, but you must go to 
your officers about it," he said when the 
petitioner stopped for breath. Again the 
tale recommenced, and the President gazed 
wearily through his office window at the 
broad river in the distance. Finally he 
turned to him out of patience. 

" Go away," he said. " Now go away. 
I cannot meddle in your case. I could as 
easily bail out the Potomac with a tea- 
spoon as attend to all the details of the 
army." 

It was not often that he showed even 
so much feeling. Ordinarily he trusted 
to the soft answer which turns away wrath, 
or to the humorous answer which disarms 

269 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

resentment. The wittiest of all of these 
he made in answering a man who wanted 
a pass to Richmond. 

" I would gladly give you the pass if 
it would do you any good," he^ said. " But 
in the last two years I have given passes to 
Richmond to 250,000 men, and not one of 
them has managed to get there yet." 

But even wit did not make refusal easy 
to this kind-hearted man. He extracted 
a grim amusement from his attack of 
varioloid by saying that at last he " had 
something he could give to everybody ! " 

Once in a while he had the pleasant sur- 
prise of a visitor with something important 
and helpful to say. At the time he was 
considering a proclamation of amnesty, 
Mr. Robert Dale Owen took it upon him- 
self to prepare a digest of historical prece- 
dents. He spent three months upon the 
task, and then asked permission to read 
his paper to the President. Mr. Lincoln, 
knowing nothing of its contents, and sec- 

270 



DAILY RECEPTIONS 

ing only a very formidable-looking docu- 
ment, settled into his attitude of patient 
endurance. But this soon gave way to 
alert interest. He began asking questions, 
and interrupting with requests that cer- 
tain paragraphs be read again. When 
Mr. Owen finished, and offered him tlic 
paper, he accepted it with hearty thanks. 

" Mr. Owen, it is due to you that I 
should say that you have conferred a very 
essential service both upon me and upon 
the country by the preparation of this 
paper. It contains that which it was ex- 
ceedingly important that I should know, 
but which, if left to myself, I never should 
have known, because I have not the time 
necessary for such an examination of au- 
thorities as a review of this kind involves. 
And I want to say, secondly, that if I 
had the time, I could not have done the 
work as well as you have done it." 

Nothing showed his patience and kindli- 
ness more than his manner with the women 

271 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

who came to the Executive Office — and 
many were the militant females he encoun- 
tered during his Presidency. 

" To-day, Mrs. Major Blank of the reg- 
ular army calls and urges the appointment 
of her husband as a brigadier-general. 
She is a saucy woman, and I am afraid 
she will keep tormenting me till I may 
have to do it," is his autograph confession 
of a spirited feminine attack; and of their 
inequality of weapons. 

The wife of a Western general, more en- 
ergetic than diplomatic, descended upon 
the capital, demanded an interview with 
the President, and upbraided him with 
meaning to ruin her husband. Lincoln be- 
gan to talk about the difficulty she must 
have experienced in making the journey 
from the West alone; more of a journey 
then than now. He was so kind that she 
had to respond, but she was very per- 
sistent, and very much in earnest, and had 
no idea of stopping there. Again and 

272 



DAILY RECEPTIONS 

again she returned to the charge; agani 
and again he parried. lie was courteous, 
even sympathetic, but he took no notice of 
her questions or insinuations, and gave 
her not a single answer. " I had to ex- 
ercise all the rude tact I have, to avoid 
quarreling with her," he said feelingly 
when the ordeal w^as over. 

But it was in dealing with women in dis- 
tress, particularly with women in the hum- 
bler walks of life, that his kindness was 
most marked. 

" It is hard to portray the exquisite 
pathos of INIr. Lincoln's character, as man- 
ifested in his acts from time to time," 
Mr. James Speed once said to my father, 
in telling him of an incident that had come 
to his knowledge. It was at the end of 
one of the daily receptions. 

" Is that all.? " Mr. Lincoln asked. 

" There is one poor woman here yet, 
Mr. President," Edward, the colored 
usher, replied. " She has been here for 
i8 273 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

several days and has been crying and tak- 
ing on, and has n't got a chance to come 
in yet." 

" Let her in," said Mr. Lincoln. 

The woman told her story. It was just 
after the battle of Gettysburg. She had a 
husband and three sons in the army, and 
was left alone to fight the hard battle of 
life. At first her husband had sent her 
regularly a part of his pay, and she had 
managed to live. But gradually he had 
yielded to the temptations of camp life, 
and no more remittances came. Her boys 
had become scattered among the various 
armies, and she was without help. Would 
not the President discharge one of them 
that he might come home to her.^^ 

While the recital was going on the 
President stood before the fireplace, his 
hands crossed behind his back, his head 
bent in earnest thought. When the woman 
ended, and waited for his reply, his hps 
opened and he spoke, not as if he were re- 

274 



DAILY RECEPTIONS 

plying to what she said, but rather as if 
he were in abstracted and unconscious self- 
communion. 

" I have two, and you have none." 

That was all he said. Then he walked 
across to his writing table, and taking a 
blank card, wrote upon it an order for the 
son's discharge. Upon another paper he 
wrote out in great detail where she should 
present it, to what department, at what 
office, and to what official; giving her such 
directions that she might personally follow 
the red-tape labyrinth. 

A few days later, at a similar close of 
the general reception for the day, Edward 
said, " That woman, Mr. President, is here 
again, and still crying." 

" Let her in," said Lincoln. " What 
can be the matter now? " 

Once more he stood in the same spot, be- 
fore the fireplace, and for the second time 
heard her story. The President's card 
had been a magic passport. It had 

275 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

opened forbidden doors, and softened the 
sternness of official countenances. By its 
help she had found headquarters, camp, 
regiment and company. But instead of 
giving a mother's embrace to a lost son re- 
stored, she had arrived only in time to 
follow him to the grave. The battle of 
Gettysburg, his wounds, his death in the 
hospital — the story came In eloquent frag- 
ments through her ill-stifled sobs. And 
now, would the President give her the next 
one of her boys? 

Once more Mr. Lincoln responded with 
sententious curtness, as if talking to him- 
self, 

" I have two, and you have none." 
Sharp and rather stern, the compres- 
sion of his lips marking the struggle be- 
tween official duty and human sympathy, 
he walked once again to his little writing 
table and took up his pen to write for the 
second time an order which should give the 
pleading woman one of her remaining boys. 

276 



DAILY RECEPTIONS 

And the woman, as if In o])cdlcncc to an 
impulse she could not control, moved after 
him, and stood by his side as he wrote, and 
with the familiarity of a mother placed her 
hand on the President's head and smoothed 
his wandering and tangled hair. Human 
grief and sympathy had ovcrleapt all the 
barriers of convention, and the ruler of a 
great nation was truly the servant, friend, 
and protector of this humble woman, 
clothed for the moment with a paramount 
claim of loyal sacrifice. 

The order was written and signed. 
The President rose and thrust it into her 
hand with the choking exclamation, 
" There ! " and hurried from the room, 
followed, so long as he could hear, by the 
thanks and blessings of an overjoyed 
mother's heart. 

Lincoln's sympathy for the soldiers was 
very genuine. They were not only fight- 
ing his country's battles — they came 
from that large mass of sturdy citizenship 

277 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

of which he spoke with pride and affection 
as " the common people." " With us 
every soldier is a man of character, and 
must be treated with more consideration 
than is customary in Europe," he ex- 
plained to a French nobleman. 

He recognized the potential force in 
each single regiment. " I happen tempo- 
rarily to occupy the White House. I am 
a living witness that any one of your chil- 
dren may look to come here as my father's 
child has," he told an Ohio regiment ; and 
another time he remarked that any regi- 
ment of the army could furnish material 
and ability to fill all the highest offices in 
the Government. 

His visits to camps and army corps 
were an ovation, for the " boys " loved 
him in return, and responded in every way 
permitted by discipline. It was not only 
for soldiers in the abstract that he cared. 
He sampled their rations, chuckled over 
their repartee, and " sized up " individual 

278 



DAILY RECEPTIONS 

members of a company as he passed by ; 
while for those in trouble he agonized in 
spirit as no ruler of this world had ever 
done. 

Court-martial cases reached a number 
approaching 30,000 a year during the 
war; and although, of course, only a small 
proportion were for capital offenses, the 
latter were referred by hundreds to Presi- 
dent Lincoln ; and each case brought to 
his notice became the subject of his per- 
sonal solicitude. Secretary Stanton and 
officers of the army protested against his 
wholesale clemency. He would ruin the 
army, they declared; but the military tel- 
egraph was kept busy with his messages 
staying executions and asking details of 
evidence. Attorney-General Bates told 
him flatly that he was not fit to be en- 
trusted with the pardoning power. This 
did not move him in the least. He pri- 
vately believed Bates to be as " pigeon- 
hearted " as himself. 

279 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

Judge-Advocate General Holt labored 
with him, pointing out why it was better 
rigidly to enforce the law. " Yes, your 
reasons are very good," he would reply, 
"but I don't think I can do it." He 
" did not believe it would make a man any 
better to shoot him," and argued that if 
the Government kept him ahve it could 
at least get some work out of him. 

He used to tell his story of the Irish 
soldier who was asked why he had de- 
serted. " Well, Captain," said he, " it 
was not me fault. I 've a heart in me 
breast as brave as Julius Caesar; but when 
the battle begins, somehow or other these 
cowardly legs of mine will run away wid 
me! " 

" I have no doubt," the President would 
add, " that is true of many a man who 
honestly means to do his duty, but is over- 
come by a physical fear greater than his 
will. I am not sure how I would act my- 
self if Minie balls were whistling, and 

280 



DAILY RECEPTIONS 

those great oblong sliells were shrieking 
in my ears." 

He used to call cases of cowardice and 
desertion his " leg cases." In the press 
of business large numbers of them accumu- 
lated on his desk; when he had leisure he 
would send for Judge Holt and go over 
them. John Hay, making record in his 
diary of six hours of a July day spent in 
this manner, commented on the eagerness 
with which Mr. Lincoln caught at any fact 
which would justify saving the life of a 
condemned soldier. He was only merciless 
in cases where meanness or cruelty were 
shown. " Cases of cowardice he was espe- 
cially averse to punishing with death. 
He said it would frighten the poor devils 
too terribly to shoot them." " Let him 
fight instead of shooting him," he en- 
dorsed on the case of a man who had once 
before deserted, and then reenlisted. 

The sentence of another who had safely 
escaped into Mexico he approved, saying, 

281 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

" We will condemn him as they sell hogs 
in Indiana, ' as they run.' " 

Schuyler Colfax, happening on such a 
scene, carried away a memory of Lin- 
coln's exceeding reluctance to approve the 
death penalty. One case he laid aside, 
saying he would wait a few days until he 
could read the evidence. Another he put 
by " until I can settle in my mind whether 
this soldier can better serve the country 
dead or living." To still a third he said 
that the general commanding would be in 
Washington soon, and he would talk it over 
with him. At last Judge Holt presented 
a very flagrant case, with the remark that 
this might meet the President's require- 
ment of serving the country better dead 
than living; but Lincoln answered that, 
anyway, he guessed he 'd put it among his 
" leg cases." 

Some of the reasons he gave for grant- 
ing pardons were whimsical enough, but 
there was a sound principle underlying his 

282 



DAILY RECEPTIONS 

action. He tried to probe for motives; 
and if he learned that a man's general 
record was good, he accepted that as pre- 
sumptive evidence that he meant to do 
right, wherever his " cowardly legs " 
might have carried him. 

" This life is too precious to be lost," 
he said in the case of a boy who fell asleep 
on guard because in addition to his own 
duty, he had volunteered to take the place 
of a sick comrade. 

" Did you say this boy was once badly 
wounded? Then, since the Scriptures say 
that in the shedding of blood Is remission 
of sins, I guess we '11 have to let him 
off," was his decree in another case. " If 
a man had more than one life I think 
a little hanging would not hurt this one," 
he said again. " But after he is once dead 
we cannot bring him to life, no matter how 
sorry we may be ; so the boy shall be par- 
doned," and resting a moment from his 
labors, he threw up his spectacles, and told 

283 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

his story of a darky in one of the bravest 
regiments at Fort Donelson. 

" Were you in the fight ? " some one 
asked him. 

" Had a little taste ob it, sah." 

'' Stood your ground, did you? " 

" No, sah — I runs." 

" Ran at the first fire, did you ? '* 

" Yes, sah, an' I would 'a run sooner 
if I knowed it was a-comin'." 

" That was not very creditable to your 
courage." 

" Dat is n't my line, sah. Cookin' is my 
perfession." 

" But have you no regard for your repu- 
tation ? " 

" Reputation 's nuffin to me by de side 
ob life." 

" Do you consider your life worth more 
than other peoples'? " 

" Worth mo' to me, sah." 

" Do you think your company would 
have missed you if you had been killed? " 

284 



DAILY RECEPTIONS 

"Maybe not, sail. A dead wlilte man 
ain' much to dcse sojcrs, let alone a dead 
nigger. But I'd 'a' missed myself, an' 
dat 's de point wif me." 

Many of Lincoln's daily visitors came 
on these sad errands. Congressmen ap- 
pealed to him to pardon their constituents. 
" Why don't you men up there in Congress 
repeal the law, instead of coming and ask- 
ing me to override it and make it practi- 
cally a dead letter? " he asked. But they 
did not see fit to do so, and he plodded 
wearily through endless masses of testi- 
mony. 

It was in this labor that he spent the 
morning after his reelection. He became 
more and more convinced of the sickening 
uselessness of " this butchering business." 
" There are already too many weeping 
widows in the United States," he said. 
" For God's sake do not ask me to add to 
the number ! " and he almost invariably 
suspended execution " until further or- 

285 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

ders," which, needless to say, were never 
given. 

" If a man comes to him with a touching 
story, his judgment is almost certain to 
be affected by it. Should the applicant 
be a woman — a wife, mother, or sister — 
in nine cases out of ten, her tears, if noth- 
ing else, are sure to prevail," Attorney- 
General Bates declared. 

The most whimsical reason sufficed. 

" My poor girl," he said to a young 
woman in a neat but scanty dress, " you 
have come with no governor or senator or 
member of Congress to plead your cause. 
You seem truthful, and you donH wear 
hoops, and I '11 be whipped but I '11 pardon 
your brother ! " 

Some of these cases came very close to 
him personally, as he read the names of 
men or sons of men he had known ; but 
even when no personal acquaintance in- 
tensified his interest, the care he bestowed 
upon them was enormous. Not only one 

286 



DAILY RECEPTIONS 

telegram, but several would be sent about 
a single case. Some of them, long and 
full of detail, betrayed the strain to whicli 
his sympathy had been subjected. One, 
to General Mead, was as follows : 

An intelligent woman in deep distress 
called this morning, saying her husband, a 
lieutenant in the Army of the Potomac, was 
to be shot next Monday for desertion; and 
putting a letter in my hand, upon which I 
relied for particulars, she left me without 
mentioning a name or other particular by 
which to identify the case. On opening the 
letter I found it equally vague, having 
nothing to identify her by except her sig- 
nature, which seems to be " Mrs. Anna S. 
King." I could not again find her. If you 
have a case which you shall think is probably 
the one intended, please apply my despatch 
of this morning to it. 

His " despatch of this morning " was 
bis usual order to postpone execution till 
further orders. 

287 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

Thaddeus Stevens once went with a con- 
stituent of his, an elderly woman, to the 
President on an errand of mercy. Mr. 
Lincoln granted her request, and her 
gratitude was literally too deep for words. 
Not a syllable did she utter until they 
were well on their way out of the White 
House, when she stood still and broke forth 
vehemently : 

" I knew it was a Copperhead lie ! " 

"What do you mean, madam?" he 
asked. 

" They told me that he was an ugly- 
looking man ! He is not. He is the 
handsomest man I ever saw in my life ! " 



288 



XIV 

THE MEMORANDUM OF AUGUST TWENTY- 
THIRD 

' T AM here by the blunders of the Denio- 
X crats," Lincoln told Hugh McCulloch. 
" If, instead of resolving that the war was 
a failure, they had resolved that I was a 
failure, and denounced me for not more 
vigorously prosecuting it, I should not 
have been reelected." 

No act or episode of his life was more 
characteristic than his attitude toward a 
second term. In talking with strangers 
he discouraged any mention of it, but to 
friends he frankly admitted his readiness 
to continue the work he had entei;^d upon. 
" A second term would be a great honor, 
19 289 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

and a great labor, which together, per- 
haps, I would not decline if tendered." 

His two secretaries were, of course, 
keenly interested; and the way he pursued 
his undeviating course, not indifferent to, 
but regardless of, his political fate, would 
have won their undying admiration, had 
it not been his long before. 

" This town is now as dismal as a de- 
faced tombstone," John Hay wrote my 
father late in the summer of 1863. " The 
Tycoon is in fine whack. I have rarely 
seen him so serene and so busy. He is 
managing this war, the draft, foreign re- 
lations, and planning a reconstruction of 
the Union, all in one. I never knew with 
what tyrannous authority he rules the 
cabinet until now. The most important 
things he decides, and there is no cavil. 
I am growing more and more firmly con- 
vinced that the good of the country abso- 
lutely demands that he should be kept 
where he is till this thing blows over. 

290 



AUGUST TWENT Y-TII I U 1) 

There is no man in the country so wise, 
so gentle and so firm. I believe the hand 
of God placed him where he is." 

" Some well-meaning newspapers advise 
the President to keep his fingers out of the 
military pie, and all that sort of tlu'ng," 
he wrote again; "the truth is, if he did, 
the pie would be a sorry mess. The old 
man sits here and w^ields like a backwoods 
Jupiter the bolts of war and the machinery 
of Government, with a hand equally steady 
and equally firm. ... I do not know 
whether the nation is w^orthy of him for 
another term. I know the people want 
him. There is no mistaking that fact. 
But politicians are strong yet and he is 
not ' their kind of a cat.' I hope God 
won't see fit to scourge us for our sins by 
any one of the tw^o or three most promi- 
nent candidates on the ground. • . ." 

Republicans generally felt as did these 
tw^o young men, but the President had 
active critics and opponents within his own 

291 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

party. " Corruption, intrigue and malice 
are doing their worst, but I do not think 
it Is In the cards to beat the Tycoon," 
my father wrote in his turn. Curiously 
enough, the most determined opposition 
within Republican ranks came from anti- 
slavery men, who could not forgive the 
Emancipator for the deliberation with 
which he took the steps toward freedom. 
There were also those who blamed him for 
the slow progress of the war. 

It was hard, however, for these elements 
of discontent to find a rallying point, since 
no prominent Republican in Congress or 
in the military service cared to enter the 
ungrateful contest. In the cabinet only 
one man was short-sighted enough to 
Imagine he could make headway against 
Lincoln's wide popularity. This was 
Chase, who had been the first to assure 
Lincoln of his support in I860. Pure 
minded and absolutely devoted to the 
Union though he was, he seemed Incapable 

292 



AUGUST TWENTY -THIRD 

of judging men or motives — even his own 
— correctly. He really thought himself 
free from political ambition, and truly Lin- 
coln's friend, yet for months he was busy 
writing letters in the interests of his own 
candidacy. 

Lincoln knew of this, but went on ap- 
pointing Mr. Chase's partlzans to office. 
John Hay, wrathfully indignant, ventured 
to free his mind to his chief, telling him 
he was making himself particeps crim'inis 
by these appointments. " He seemed much 
amused at Chase's mad hunt after the 
Presidency," the young man wrote. " He 
says it may win. Lie hopes the country 
will never do worse." 

The movement in Chase's favor reached 
its culmination in a secret circular signed 
by a committee of which Senator Pomeroy 
of Kansas was chairman, which criticized 
Lincoln's " tendency toward compromises 
and temporary expedients " and lauded 
Chase as the man to rescue the country 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

from present and future ills. Copies of 
this soon reached the White House. Lin- 
coln refused to look at them. Shortly 
afterward it got into print. Secretary 
Chase wrote to the President offering to 
resign, but assuring him that he had no 
knowledge of the document before seeing 
it in the newspapers. 

Mr. Robert Lincoln remembers that he 
was at home at the time, and that after 
dinner his father strolled into his room, 
showed him Mr. Chase's letter, asked for 
writing materials, and sitting down wrote 
a note in answer, to the effect that he knew 
just as little about such things as his 
friends allowed him to know, that neither 
of them could be held responsible for acts 
committed without their instigation or ap- 
proval, and adding, " Whether you shall 
remain at the head of the Treasury De- 
partment is a question which I will not 
allow myself to consider from any stand- 
point other than my judgment of the pub- 

294 



AUGUST T W E N T Y - T H I R 1) 

lie service, and, in tliat \\v\v, I do not 
perceive occasion for a change." 

When he showed this to his son, the 
latter asked in sui^^rise if lie had not seen 
the circular. Mr. Lincoln stopped him 
almost sternly, saying that a good many 
people had tried to tell him something it 
did not suit him to hear, and that his 
answer to the Secretary of the Treasury 
was literally true. " Thereupon," Mr. 
Robert Lincoln added, " at his request I 
called a messenger, and the note to Mr. 
Chase was sent." 

Mr. Chase's candidacy, however, had no 
foundation except in the imagination of a 
few personal followers, and perished for 
lack of nourishment. An attempt, made 
without Grant's knowledge, to stampede 
the country for that general, failed for the 
same reason. Lincoln regarded that also 
with the utmost serenity. "If he takes 
Richmond, let him have it," he said. 

But the talk annoyed him. " I wish they 
295 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

would stop thrusting that subject of the 
Presidency into my face," he remarked. 
" I don't want to hear anything about it." 

It was neither Chase nor Grant, but 
Fremont who was finally nominated by 
Republican malcontents in a much-her- 
alded but poorly attended convention at 
Cleveland. Lincoln, on hearing that most 
of the expected leaders stayed away, and 
that at no time was the attendance greater 
than four hundred, picked up the Bible 
which lay habitually on his desk, and after 
turning over the leaves a moment read : 

" And every one that was in debt, and 
every one that was discontented, gathered 
themselves unto him ; and he became a cap- 
tain over them, and there were with him 
about four hundred men." 

The great current had set toward Lin- 
coln, and when the Republican National 
Convention came together in Baltimore on 
the 7th of June, 1864, it had nothing to 
do but to record the popular will. The 

296 



AUGUST T W E N T Y - T H I R D 

choice of a Vice-president presented more 
difficulty, for there was an impression 
abroad that it would be wise to select a 
war Democrat. Lincoln was besieged to 
make his wishes known, but refused, even 
to his closest friends, being convinced that 
it was a question in which he had abso- 
lutely no right to interfere. The final 
choice was made so quickly that the Presi- 
dent, walking over to the War Depart- 
ment, in quest of news, heard of Andrew 
Johnson's nomination before the messenger 
despatched a few minutes earlier, with a 
telegram announcing his own renomlna- 
tion, had succeeded in finding him. 

Next day, for the second time in his life, 
this pioneer ruler faced a committee sent 
to tell him that he had been nominated for 
the highest office within the people's gift. 
This time he received them in the great 
East Room instead of in his modest 
Springfield parlor. He, as well as his sur- 
roundings, was altered. Experience had 

297 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

ripened him, responsibility had aged him. 
His benignity of expression was greater, 
his physical vigor less. There was in his 
bearing all the old courage, and a greater 
consciousness of power. 

The summer proved to be full of fight- 
ing and frightful losses in the armies, and 
of consequent panics among politicians. 
It became necessary to resort to a draft, 
and this in itself indicated such waning 
enthusiasm that leading Republicans 
begged the President to withdraw the call, 
or at least to suspend it until after the 
election. " What is the Presidency worth 
to me, if I have no country ? " was his 
answer. 

He brought serious criticism upon him- 
self by refusing to sign a bill passed by 
Congress which prescribed a form for re- 
establishing State governments based on 
the assumption that they had been out of 
the Union. Lincoln's contention from the 
first had been that the Union was per- 

298 



AUGUST T W E N T Y - T n I R D 

petual, and that thcj had never passed, 
and could not pass by revolution, out of 
Federal control. It was, he admitted, " a 
question of metaphysics," but it involved 
the principle on which all his action had 
been based, and which he could not ignore, 
even though it might have serious conse- 
quences for himself. 

The Peace men, meanwhile, were clamor- 
ing for an end of the war. Horace 
Greeley insisted with such vehemence that 
Confederate commissioners already were in 
Canada, empowered and ready to treat 
with the Federal authorities, that Lincoln, 
to convince him and others like-minded 
that the administration was as anxious as 
they could be to bring the war to a close, 
empowered Greeley himself to go to Can- 
ada, and if he found the alleged commis- 
sioners properly authorized, to bring them 
to Washington. The mission ended as 
Lincoln supposed it would, in proving the 
utter falsity of Greeley's assertions, and 

299 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

in making that earnest gentleman a bit 
ridiculous. 

" I sent Brother Greeley a commission. 
I guess I am about even with him," he said 
with a twinkle in his eye. 

But all these causes combined to increase 
the popular unrest, and to breed dissatis- 
faction with the administration. McClel- 
lan seemed the foreordained Democratic 
candidate, but the party managers, real- 
izing the advantage of making their op- 
ponents fight an unseen foe, and at the 
same time of keeping themselves In a po- 
sition to drop McClellan and adopt some 
one else If chance and the fortunes of war 
dictated, postponed their national conven- 
tion until September; and having no can- 
didate of their own, were free to devote 
all their time and energy to attacks upon 
the administration. 

In the campaign of I860 Lincoln had 
possessed no shadow of authority. Now 
that he commanded all the resources of the 

SOO 



AUGUST T W E N T Y - T II I R D 

GoveiTimcnt, he was implored to niako 
promises, to assist liis friends and o])pose 
his enemies. 

" I recognize no sucli tiling as political 
friendship personal to myself," he an- 
swered, and as far as promises were con- 
cerned, he kept himself as free as he had 
done four years before when he announced 
that he would go to Washington " an un- 
pledged man." 

One who was present related to my 
father the details of a stormy interview 
which took place between the President, 
Simon Cameron and Thaddeus Stevens. 
They had come to talk over the political 
situation in Pennsj^lvania. jNIr. Stevens 
said : " Mr. President, our convention at 
Baltimore has nominated you again, and 
not only that, we are going to elect you. 
But the certainty of that will depend very 
much on the vote we can give you in Penn- 
sylvania in October; and in order that we 
may be able in our State to go to work 

SOI 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

with a good will I want you to make us one 
promise; namely, that you will reorganize 
your cabinet and leave Montgomery Blair 
out of it." 

Mr. Stevens went on to elaborate his 
reasons, and a running fire of criticism 
and comment was entered into between 
the three gentlemen, gradually rising in 
warmth ; the whole interview lasting some 
two or three hours. As the discussion pro- 
ceeded, Mr. Lincoln rose from his chair 
and walked up and down the room. 

The issue being made up, he gave his 
answer, towering to his full height, and 
delivering his words with emphatic ges- 
tures and intense earnestness. 

" Mr. Stevens, I am very sorry to be 
compelled to deny your request to make 
such a promise. If I were even myself 
inclined to make it, I have no right to do 
so. What right have I to promise you 
to remove Mr. Blair, and not make a simi- 
lar promise to any other gentleman of in- 

302 



AUGUST TWENTY -THIRD 

flucncc to remove any other lueniher of my 
cabinet whom he does not happen to hke? 
The Republican party wisely or unwisely 
has made me their nominee for President, 
without asking any such pledge at my 
hands. Is it proper that you should de- 
mand it, representing only a portion of 
that great party? Has it come to this, 
that the voters of this country are asked to 
elect a man to be President — to be Ex- 
ecutive — to administer the Government, 
and yet that this man is to have no will or 
discretion of his own? Am I to be the 
mere puppet of power? To have my con- 
stitutional advisers selected beforehand, to 
be told I must do this, or leave that un- 
done? It would be degrading to my man- 
hood to consent to any such bargain — I 
was about to say it is equally degrading to 
your manhood to ask it. 

" I confess that I desire to be reelected. 
God knows I do not want the labor and 
responsibility of the office for another four 

303 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

years. But I have the common pride of 
humanity to wish my past four years' ad- 
ministration endorsed ; and besides I hon- 
estly beheve that I can better sers^e the 
nation in its need and peril than any new 
man could possibly do. I want to finish 
this job of putting down the rebellion, and 
restoring peace and prosperity to the coun- 
try. But I would have the courage to 
refuse the office rather than to accept on 
such disgraceful terms as really not to be 
President after I am elected." 

The political horizon grew darker and 
darker. Military victory, which would 
have rejoiced all hearts and turned the 
current toward Republican success, was 
denied. Lincoln grew haggard and care- 
worn. To a friend who urged him to go 
away for a fortnight's rest, he replied, " I 
cannot fly from my thoughts. My solici- 
tude for this great country follows me 
wherever I go. I do not think it is per- 
sonal vanity or ambition, though I am not 

304 



AUGUST T W E N T Y - T H I R D 

free from these infirmities, but I cannot 
but feel that the weal or woe of tins great 
nation will be decided in November. 
There is no program offered by any wing 
of the Democratic party but that must 
result in the permanent destruction of the 
Union." 

Toward the end of August he became 
convinced that the election was likely to 
go against him. Having come to this con- 
clusion, he laid down for himself in writing 
the course he ought to pursue. On the 
23d he wrote: 

" This morning, as for some days past, 
it seems exceedingly probable that this ad- 
ministration will not be reelected. Then 
it will be my duty to so cooperate with the 
President-elect as to save the Union be- 
tween the election and the inauguration, as 
he will have secured his election on such 
ground that he cannot possibly save it 
after^vard." 

He folded and pasted the sheet of paper 
^° 305 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

in such a way that its contents were hid- 
den, and as the members of the cabinet 
came in, handed it to each in turn, asking 
them to write their names across the back. 
Then he put the paper away, giving no 
hint of its nature. 

Two days later my father wrote to John 
Hay, who was in IHinois : 

Dear Major: Hell is to pay. The New 
York politicians have got a stampede on that 
is about to swamp everything. Raymond 
and the National Committee are here to-day. 
R. thinks a commission to Richmond is about 
the only salt to save us; while the Tycoon 
sees and says it would be utter ruination. 
The matter is now undergoing consultation. 
Weak-kneed d — d fools . . . are in the 
movement for a new candidate to supplant 
the Tycoon. Everything is darkness and 
doubt and discouragement. Our men see 
giants in the airy and unsubstantial shadows 
of the opposition, and are about to surrender 
without a fight. 

306 



AUGUST TWENTY-THIRD 

I think that to-day and lierc is the tiiniiiig- 
point in our crisis. If the President can in- 
fect R. and his committee witli some of liis 
own patience and pluck, we are saved. If 
our friends will only rub their eyes and 
shake themselves, and become convinced tliat 
they themselves are not dead, we shall win 
the fight overwhelmingly. 

Henry J. Raymond was Chairman of 
the Executive Committee of the llepubll- 
can party. Mr. Lincoln answered his pro- 
posal to send a commission to Richmond 
by the same kindergarten method lie bad 
used in answering Greeley. He asked Mr. 
Raymond to draw up an experimental 
draft of resolutions which be proposed 
that Mr. Raymond should himself carry to 
Richmond. On seeing them in black and 
white the mission took on a different 
aspect, and Raymond readily agreed that 
such a course would be worse than losing 
the election — it would be surrendering it 
in advance. 

S07 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

" Nevertheless," wrote the President's 
secretary, " the visit of himself and com- 
mittee did great good. They found the 
President and cabinet much better in- 
formed than themselves, and went home 
encouraged and cheered." 

That proved indeed to be the turning- 
point of the campaign. A few days later 
the Democrats nominated McClellan upon 
a platform declaring the war to be a fail- 
ure. That in itself was fatal to their 
cause, since McClellan's one chance of suc- 
cess lay in his war record. " The Lord 
preserve this country from the kind of 
peace they would give us 1 It will be a 
dark day for this nation if they elect the 
Chicago ticket ! " wrote an inmate of the 
White House. 

McClellan himself was apparently some- 
what aghast. He did not reply to the let- 
ter from the Convention for some days. 
Lincoln was asked what he thought could 

308 



AUGUST TWENTY-THIRD 

be the cause of the delay. " Oh,'' he said, 
" he 's intrenching." 

Mihtary and naval victories began to 
succeed the discouragements of the preced- 
ing months; the country awoke to the true 
meaning of the Democratic platform ; and 
in a brilliant rush of enthusiasm and hope 
the political campaign went on to its tri- 
umphant end with Republican majorities 
so incredibly large that one patriot re- 
marked in the utmost reverence, that " The 
Almighty himself must have stuffed the 
ballot-boxes." 

The night of election day was rainy and 
dark. The President splashed through 
puddles to the War Department to get the 
returns, and sent the interesting despatches 
back to Mrs. Lincoln at the White House, 
saying, " She is more anxious than I am." 

He was not alone as he had been four 
years before when the telegraph instru- 
ments ticked news of his victory, and the 

809 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

appalling sense of his responsibility had 
blotted out the noise of cheering in the 
streets. This election was a vindication of 
the way he had borne his trust ; the verdict 
of the people that they held him worthy 
to complete his task. Officials and friends 
came and went as he read the returns. He 
was "most genial and agreeable all the 
evening," and when a midnight supper 
appeared from some beneficent and mys- 
terious source, he took the part of host, 
and " went awkwardly and hospitably to 
work," serving the fried oysters. He told 
stories, and was gay and happy, yet there 
was no lack of feeling, even of deep solem- 
nity, in the closing words of the little 
speech he made to the serenaders he found 
waiting for him when he left the War De- 
partment in the early morning hours to 
return to the White House: 

" I am thankful to God for this ap- 
proval of the people; but while deeply 
grateful for this mark of their confidence 

310 



AUGUST TWENTY -THIRD 

in mc, If I know my heart, my gratitude is 
free from any taint of personal triumph. 
. . . It Is no pleasure to me to trluinj)h 
over any one; but I give thanks to the 
Almighty for this evidence of the people's 
resolution to stand by free government and 
the riglits of humanity." 

At the next cabinet meeting the Presi- 
dent took a paper from his desk. It had 
a series of autographs across the back. 
" Gentlemen," he said, " do you remember 
last summer I asked you to sign your 
names to the back of a paper of which I 
did not show you the inside? This is It. 
Now, Mr. Hay, see if you can get this 
open without tearing it." It required 
some little cutting to get it open. Then 
he read the memorandum of August 23d 
with its signature, A. Lincoln, and the 
names on the outside, William H. Seward, 
W. P. Fessenden, Edwin M. Stanton, 
Gideon Welles, Edw. Bates, M. Blair, and 
J. P. Usher. 

311 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

" You will remember," he said, " that 
this was written at a time six days before 
the Chicago nominating convention, when 
as yet we had no adversary, and seemed 
to have no friends. I then solemnly re- 
solved on the course of action indicated 
above. I resolved in case of the election 
of General McClellan, being certain that 
he would be the candidate, that I would 
see him and talk matters over with him. 
I would say, ' General, the election has 
demonstrated that you are stronger and 
have more influence with the American 
people than L Now let us together, you 
with your influence, and I with all the ex- 
ecutive power of the Government, try to 
save the country. You raise as many 
troops as you possibly can for this final 
trial, and I will devote all my energies to 
assisting and finishing the war.' " 

One of his hearers said, " And the gen- 
eral would answer you, ' Yes, Yes ' ; and 
the next day when you saw him again, and 

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AUGUST TWENTY-TIir RD 

pressed those views upon Iii,,,, hv would 
say, ' Yes, Yes,' and so on forever, and 
would have done nothing at all." 

" At least," said the President, *' I 
should have done my duty and have stood 
clear before my own conscience." 

Just when one feels that one has Lin- 
coln's traits classified — that he was a very 
kind man with a keenly logical mind and 
a buoyant disposition — a man with ideals 
but no illusions, who saw things witliout 
glamor, and patiently looked ahead to 
plan and combine them to his will, one 
comes upon some such contradiction as 
this. 

Why did he write such a paper as this 
memorandum of August 23, 186-i? And, 
having w^ritten it, why did he paste it to- 
gether and get his cabinet to write their 
names across the back, ignorant of its con- 
tents ? 

What hidden comfort did he expect to 
derive from this — or what possible use 

313 



/ ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

could he have made of it if the nightmare 
of his defeat had come true? He was sure 
of his own steadfastness, sure of the loy- 
alty of his cabinet. Why resort to this 
unpractical but most characteristic act? 

Was it that while he had the courage to 
stand alone — to bear his burden silently 
without adding to the gloom and discour- 
agement of even his closest advisers — 
he wrote this and got them to set their 
names upon it as a sort of silent wit- 
ness of his secret pledge — that though he 
meant to go down in defeat, if he must, 
" like the Cumberland, with colors flying," 
he craved for himself the sympathy he gave 
in such unstinted measure to others? 



314 



XV 

HIS FORGIVING SPIRIT 

ON the day of Lincoln's second elec- 
tion the White House was still and 
deserted. " Everybody in Washington, 
and not at home voting, seems ashamed of 
it, and stays away from the President," 
John Hay wrote. Sitting in this un- 
wonted leisure, Lincoln's deep-set eyes 
looked back over the thirty-two years of 
his political life. After a time he said: 
" It is a little singular that I, who am not 
a vindictive man, should have always been 
before the people for election in canvasses 
marked for their bitterness. Always but 
once. When I came to Congress it was a 
quiet time. ..." 

315 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

At the end of the vista he saw a lank, un- 
known youth of twenty-three, carefully 
signing his name to his first public paper, 
an " Address to the Voters of Sangamon 
County," which was a territory larger 
than the State of Rhode Island, and as far 
removed from the center of political life as 
the equator is from the pole. The friend 
to whom he spoke saw a gaunt, care-worn 
figure, aging before his time, whose sad 
benignant face was known to the world's 
end ; and whose name, written with equal 
care at the foot of a state paper not long 
before, had set four million people free. 
These thirty-two years had covered a 
period of material development as great as 
that of any century preceding it, and keep- 
ing pace with this, the political activities in 
which he had taken part had ranged from 
the purely local needs of a frontier com- 
munity to the moral problems which have 
shaken empires and made martyrs since the 
world began. 

316 



HIS FORGIVING SPIRIT 

Tliat he passed through these witliout 
engendering spite in himself or enmity in 
his opponents sliows that he was indeed 
" not a vindictive man." There was a 
Quaker strain in his blood. His father had 
been called lazy. If Lincoln inherited any 
of this trait it was transmuted both by 
bis Quaker blood and by the kindness in 
his heart into a laziness about making 
quarrels. That night of his second elec- 
tion the group gathered in the War De- 
partment, jubilant over the returns, yet 
found time to say hard things about cer- 
tain public men who had been hostile to the 
President. " You have more of that feel- 
ing of personal resentment than I have," 
Lincoln said in surprise. " Perhaps I have 
too little of it; but I never thought it paid. 
A man has not the time to spend half his 
life in quarrels. If any man ceases to at- 
tack me, I never remember the past against 
him." 

Which is perhaps the reason why, ac- 
317 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

cording to the daily press, " intimate 
friends " of the great President have been 
dying with alarming frequency for forty 
years. He was so kindly that people felt 
" intimate " with him on very slight ac- 
quaintance. 

That friends were a better political and 
worldly asset than enemies, a logic less keen 
than his could easily prove; yet it is safe 
to say that it was his heart rather than his 
head which made him strive, all his life 
long, to turn enemies into friends. 

He did not like strife. In his merchant 
days he preserved the decencies of his shop 
by knocking down a ruffian who insisted on 
swearing in the presence of women, and he 
emphasized the lesson by rubbing a plenti- 
ful supply of dog- fennel into his cheeks, 
but when the man howled for mercy Lin- 
coln brought water to bathe his smarting 
face. 

With the exception of his one duel he 
was never engaged in a political quarrel. 

318 



HIS FORGIVING SPIRIT 

In 1840 a man named Anderson with whom 
he was contesting a seat in tlie legislature 
sent him a note bristling with belligerent 
possibilities. Lincoln's answer ended the 
matter, though it was more of an apology 
to himself than to his correspondent. 

In the difficulty between us of which you 
speak you say you think I was the aggressor. 
I do not think I was. You say my " words 
imported insult." I meant them as a fair set- 
off to your own statements and not otherwise ; 
and in that light alone I now wish you to 
understand them. You ask for my " present 
feelings on the subject." I entertain no un- 
kind feelings to you, and none of any sort 
upon the subject, except a sincere regret that 
I permitted myself to get into such an alterca- 
tion. 

In maturer life his attitude was ever the 
same. While he was President it became 
his official duty to reprimand a young of- 
ficer court-martialed for quarreling. No 
gentler rebuke was ever administered. 

319 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

The advice of a father to his son, " Be- 
ware of entrance to a quarrel, but being in, 
bear it that the opposed may beware of thee," 
is good, but not the best. Quarrel not at all. 
No man, resolved to make the most of him- 
self, can spare the time for personal conten- 
tion. Still less can he afford to take all the 
consequences, including the vitiating of his 
temper, and the loss of self-control. Yield 
larger things to which you can show no more 
than equal right ; and yield lesser ones though 
clearly your own. Better give your path to 
a dog than be bitten by him in contesting for 
the right. Even killing the dog would not 
cure the bite. 

The sweet reasonableness of turning the 
other cheek is not often urged. 

His sense of humor, and his failure to 
take himself too seriously, gave him all the 
more time and strength for things which 
really mattered, but led his friends at times 
into questionable liberties of speech. Gen- 
eral John M. Palmer once said to him, 

320 



HIS FORGIVING SPIRIT 

" Well, Mr. Lincoln, if nnyhody had told 
me that In a great crisis hke this, the peo- 
ple were going out to a little one-horse town 
and pick out a one-horse lawyer for Presi- 
dent, I would not have believed it." 

Mr. Lincoln was in the hands of tlie 
barber at the time. He whirled about in 
his chair, sweeping the man out of tlie way 
with his long arm. General Palmer sud- 
denly realized the enormity of his blunder. 
But the President was not angry. Placing 
his hand on the general's knee he answered 
very earnestly, " Neither would I." 

There is an Illuminating entry In John 

Hay's diary. " B and the President 

continue to be on very good terms in spite 
of the publication of B.'s letter. . . . B. 
came to explain it to the President, but he 
told him he was too busy to quarrel with 
him. If he (B.) did n't show him the let- 
ter he probably would never see It." 

Although he would not go half way to- 
ward a quarrel he would take a deal of 
21 321 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

pains to correct a misunderstanding. He 
relied much on a full and frank interchange 
of Ideas. He once wrote to Thurlow 
Weed: 

My dear Sir : I have been brought to fear 
recently that somehow by commission or 
omission, I have caused you some degree of 
pain, I have never entertained an unkind 
feeling or a disparaging thought toward you, 
and if I have said or done anything which 
has been construed into such unkindness or 
disparagement, it has been misconstrued. I 
am sure if we could meet we would not part 
with any unpleasant impression on either 
side. 

Carl Schurz sent him a letter of criticism 
which he felt to be unjust, and to which he 
sent a long and, for him, unusually caustic 
reply. Mr. Schurz in his " Autobiogra- 
phy " tells the sequel : 

Two or three days after Mr. Lincoln's 
letter had reached me a special messenger 

S22 



HIS FORGIVING SPIRIT 

from him brought nic another co.nnnmica- 
tion from him, a sliort note in his own hand 
askmg me to come to see him as soon as my 
duties would permit. He wished me, if pos- 
sible, to call early in the morning before the 
usual crowd of visitors arrived. . . . The 
next morning at seven I reported mvself at 
the White House. I was promptlv' shown 
into the little room upstairs which was at 
that time used for cabinet meetings — the 
room with the Jackson portrait above the 
mantelpiece — and found Mr. Lincoln seated 
in an arm-chair before the open grate fire, 
his feet in gigantic morocco slippers. He' 
greeted me cordially as of old, and bade me 
pull up a chair and sit down by his side. 
Then he brought his large hand, with a slap, 
down on my knee, and said with a smile: 
"Now tell me, young man, whether you 
really think that I am as poor a fellow as 
you have made me out in your letter.? " 

I must confess this reception disconcerted 
me. I looked into his face and felt some- 
thing like a big lump in my throat. After a 
while I gathered up my wits, and after a word 

323 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

of sorrow if I had written anything that 
could have pained him, I explained to him 
ray impressions of the situation and my rea- 
sons for writing him as I had done. He 
listened with silent attention, and when I 
stopped said very seriously, ** Well, I know 
that you are a warm antislavery man, and a 
good friend to me. Now let me tell you all 
about it." Then he unfolded in his peculiar 
way his views of the then existin*g state of 
affairs, his hopes and apprehensions, his 
troubles and his embarrassments, making 
many quaint remarks about men and things. 
I regret I cannot remember all. Then he 
described how the criticisms coming down 
upon all sides chafed him, and how my letter, 
although containing some points that were 
well founded and useful, had touched him as 
a terse summing-up of all the principal 
criticisms, and offered him a good chance at 
me for a reply. Then, slapping my knee 
again, he broke out in a loud laugh and ex- 
claimed — 

" Did n't I give it to you hard in my letter ? 
Didn't I.^ But it didn't hurt, did it.? I 

324 



H I^S FORGIVING S P I It I T 

did not mean to, and therefore I wanted you 
to come so quickly." 

He laughed again and seemed to enjoy the 
matter heartily. ** Well," he added, " I guess 
we understand one another now, and it 's all 
right." 

When after a conversation of more than 
an hour, I left him, I asked whether he still 
wished that I should write to him. 

" Why certainly," he answered. " Write 
to me whenever the spirit moves you." 

We parted better friends than ever. 

More than once he wrote such letters, 
and then refrained from sending them. 
One of these was to General Meade after 
Lee's escape from Pennsylvania. Another, 
which was sent, bears an endorsement in 
his own hand. 

" Withdrawn because considered harsh 
by General Halleck." 

Still another, which came to liglit many 
years after the war, bore on its envelope in 
the handwriting of General Hunter, " The 

S25 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

President's reply to my ' ugly letter.' 
This lay on his table a month after it was 
written, and when finally sent was by a 
special conveyance, with the direction that 
it was only to be given me when I was in 
a good humor." 

While not insensible to personal criti- 
cism, he was far too even-tempered to be 
unduly influenced by it. He knew that 
much of it was like the Irishman's descrip- 
tion of a tree-toad in one of his stories, 
" Nothin' afther all but a blame noise ! " 
while some of the rest could be excused for 
the reason given in another of his stories 
by the henpecked man for standing his 
wife's abuse, " It does n't hurt me any, and 
you 've no idea what a power of good it 
does to Sarah Ann." 

He was broad-minded enough to remem- 
ber that a man's opinion of him, or of his 
administration, might not impair his use- 
fulness as a public servant. It seemed a 

326 



HIS FORGIVING SPIRIT 

poor rule that would not work botli ways. 
He knew he would be censured, ,u,(I riirl.tlv, 
for appointing a man to office slnipry be- 
cause he praised hini. It seemed equally 
illogical to refuse to appoint men simply 
because they blamed him. When lie was 
remonstrated with for giving an office to one 
who had zealously opposed his reelection, 
he is reported to have said, « That would 
not make him less fit for the place. And I 
think I have Scriptural authority for ap- 
pointing him. You remember, when the 
Lord was on Mt. Sinai getting out a com- 
mission for Aaron, that same Aaron was at 
the foot of the mountain, making a false 
god for the people to worship. Yet Aaron 
got his commission." 

His sense of fairness, and absolute free- 
dom from personal resentment were no- 
where more forcibly exhibited than in his 
relations with his generals. But clear 
reading of character went hand in hand 

327 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

with forbearance. His letter to General 
Joseph Hooker on placing him in command 
shows how completely this was so. 

I have placed you at the head of the Army 
of the Potomac. Of course I have done this 
upon what appear to me to be sufficient rea- 
sons^ and yet I think it best for you to know 
that there are some things in regard to which 
I am not quite satisfied with you. I believe 
you to be a brave and skilful soldier, which, 
of course, I like. I also believe you do not 
mix politics with your profession, in which 
you are right. You have confidence in your- 
self, which is a valuable, if not an indis- 
pensable quality. You are ambitious, which, 
within reasonable bounds, does good rather 
than harm; but I think that during General 
Burnside's command of the army you have 
taken counsel of your ambition and thwarted 
him as much as you could, in which you did 
a great wrong to the country, and to a most 
meritorious and honorable brother officer. I 
have heard, in such a way as to believe it, 
of your recently saying that both the army 

328 



HIS FORGIVING SPIRIT 

and the Government needed .i dielalor. Of 
course it was not for tl.is, but in spite of it, 
that I have given you the command. Only 
those generals who gain successes can set up 
dictators. What I now ask of you is nuMitarv 
success, and I will risk the dictatorship. 
The Government will support you to the ut- 
most of its ability, which is neither more nor 
less than it has done and will do for all com- 
manders. I much fear that the spirit which 
you have aided to infuse into the army, of 
criticizing their commander and withholding 
confidence from him, will now turn upon you. 
I shall assist you as far as I can to put it 
down. Neither you nor Napoleon, if he were 
alive again, could get any good out of an 
army while such a spirit prevails in it; and 
now, beware of rashness. Beware of rash- 
ness, but with energy and sleepless vigilance 
go forward and give us victories. 

When Grant's critics brought up old 
gossip of his drunkenness, he answered 
with the jest which has been quoted as 
proof of his abandoned character, that he 

329 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

would be glad to know the brand of whisky 
he used; or with another variant of this 
same idea, quoted in Admiral Dahlgren's 
diary — the reply of George III to the 
charge that one of his generals was quite 
mad. " If that were true, he wished he 
would bite all his other generals." 

One of Lincoln's secretaries, discussing 
the various generals, remarked that there 
was only one to whom power would be 
really dangerous. McClellan was too 
timid. Grant too sound and cool-headed to 
usurp authority, and so on. " Yes," said 
the President, referring to still another 
who had been mentioned. " He is hke Jim 
Jett's brother. Jim used to say that his 
brother was the d — dst scoundrel that ever 
lived; but that in the infinite mercy of 
Providence, he was also the d — dst fool." 

With McClellan the President's personal 
relations were typical. At first the general 
had been overwhelmed by his new and 
strange position, " President, General Scott 

330 



HIS I O R G 1 V I N (; S ]> I U I r 

and all deferring to inc," hul in contum- 
platlng his own great responsibility lie 
quickly forgot this, and even tlie rights 
and courtesies due to others. The Presi- 
dent, as was his custom, went freely to his 
house, by day or night. One evening a 
long and awkward youth, introduced as 
" Captain Orleans," just come to serve on 
McClellan's staff, went to announce his ar- 
rival. " One does n't like to make a mes- 
senger of the king of France, as that youth, 
the Count of Paris, would be, if his family 
had kept the throne," Lincoln said quietly, 
as he watched him mount the stairs. 

But to McClellan the President's sim- 
plicity of manner seemed to indicate in- 
competence. Contemptuous mention of 
him and his cabinet in private letters 
passed to marks of open disrespect, which 
reached their climax one night when Mr. 
Lincoln, accompanied by Mr. Seward and 
a secretary, went to the general's house. 
Being told that he was at a wedding, they 

331 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

waited an hour for his return. They heard 
the servant at the door tell him that they 
were there, but the General paid scant heed, 
and passing the door of the room in which 
they sat, went on upstairs. After another 
half hour they sent to remind him that they 
were still waiting. Word came back that 
he had gone to bed. 

No comment was made as the three 
walked away, but after Secretary Seward 
had been left at his own door the anger of 
the younger man blazed forth at this "un- 
paralleled insolence of epaulettes." The 
President " seemed not to have noticed it 
specially, saying it was better at this time 
not to be making points of etiquette and 
personal dignity." But we are told that he 
stopped going to McClellan's house, send- 
ing for the General to come to him when he 
desired to see him. 

It was harder for a man of Lincoln's 
temperament to forgive a wrong to his 
country than to himself ; yet after McClel- 

3S2 



HIS FORGIVING SPIRIT 

lan's dismal failure, after Lis wildly insub- 
ordinate letter charging the President and 
the administration with doing their utmost 
to sacrifice his army; and after his direct 
suggestion that General Pope, who was in 
peril through McClellan's own fault, be left 
to " get out of his scrape as best he might," 
Lincoln crowded back all resentment public 
and private, and over the protest of his 
cabinet, placed him in command of the de- 
fenses of Washington, because he was con- 
vmced that " if he cannot fight himself he 
excels in making others ready to fight." 

"We must use the tools we have," he 
used to say.^ And his whole attitude was 
summed up in his announcement, " I shall 
do nothing in malice. What I deal with is 
too vast for malicious dealing." 

He understood McClellan, both his good 
qualities and his defects. When he gave 
Grant his commission as Lieutenant-Gen- 
eral, the two had a little talk, and he spoke 
a parable, telling of a war among the ani- 

333 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

mals, when Jocco, the monkey, was sure he 
could command the army if only his tail 
were a little longer. So they spliced a 
piece on, and Jocco looked at it admiringly, 
and said he thought he would like a little 
more. And they gave it, and he called for 
more, until the room was full of tail. 
Then, there being no place elsewhere, they 
began coiling it about his shoulders, until 
the sheer weight of it broke him down. 

Even when his sorrow and resentment 
were keenest he did not fail to give credit 
for the good which had been done. Lee's 
escape after Gettysburg grieved him 
sorely. He said to his son, " If I had 
gone up there I could have whipped them 
myself." He felt that at that moment the 
Union army held the war in the hollow of 
its hand — and would not close it. 
" Still," he added generously, " I am very, 
very grateful to Meade for the great serv- 
ice he did at Gettysburg." 

When the Chief Justiceship, the highest 
S34 



HIS FORGIVING SPIRIT 

office in a President's gift, fell vacant, Ik.- 
gave it to Chase, though no one had worked 
harder to supplant Lincoln in the Presi- 
dency. The wonder and splendor of the 
act fairly dazzled the secretary who carried 
the nomination to the Senate. 

"Congress met Monday," he wrote, 
" but the President did not get the mes- 
sage ready until Tuesday when it was sent 
m. At the same time he sent in the nom- 
ination of Chase for Chief Justice of the 
Supreme Court. Probably no other man 
than Lincoln would have had, in this age 
of the world, the degree of magnanimity to 
thus forgive and exalt a rival who had so 
deeply and unjustifiably intrigued against 
him. It is, however, only another marked 
illustration of the greatness of the Presi- 
dent in this age of little men." 

But his quiet appreciation of Chase's po- 
sition had been very keen. During the in- 
terval between his resignation from the cab- 
inet, and his appointment as Chief Justice, 

335 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

Mr. Lincoln's secretary one day brought 

his chief a letter from Mr. Chase who was 

in Ohio. 

"What is it about.?" the President 

asked. 

" Simply a kind and friendly letter." 
Without reading it, Mr. Lincoln said, 

" File it with his other recommendations." 



336 



XVI 

HIS REASON AND HIS HEART 

THOUGH Lincoln's place in history 
rests on the fact that he freed the 
slaves, his place in the hearts of men rests 
on something entirely different — the way 
in which he did it. A fanatic, or a tyrant 
might have signed a proclamation of eman- 
cipation ; but only a man of clear vision and 
surpassing goodness could have moved 
through years of bloodshed to a culmina- 
ting act which destroyed miHions of his 
countrymen's property at a stroke of the 
pen, and yet kept an ever warmer place in 
their affections. 

His two qualities of head and heart acted 

like counterweights. His logic, though 
22 337 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

unsparing, was never hopeless, being 
warmed by the goodness of his heart. He 
beheved that right would ultimately tri- 
umph, and this gave him patience to move 
slowly, to bear apparent defeat, and to 
wait the appointed time of the Lord. His 
faith in a mysterious overruling Provi- 
dence was too sincere and too humble to 
permit his attempting to force either right- 
eousness or justice on an unready world. 

Personal observation and experience had 
very little to do in forming his convictions 
on slavery. Though born in a slave State 
he left it when a mere child, and he had 
only passing glimpses of slavery's hghts 
and shadows during his two flatboat voy- 
ages to New Orleans. It was his inborn 
sense of natural justice which revolted 
against the barbarous selfishness of the 
system. 

" If slavery is not wrong, nothing is 
wrong," he said. To the argument that 
it was a necessity forced upon the white 

338 



HIS REASON AND HEART 

man, he replied, ^ that goin^r nmnv thou- 
sand miles, seizing a set of savages, l,ring- 
mg them here and making slaves of them, 
IS a necessity imposed on us by them, in- 
volves a species of logic to which my mind 
wdl scarcely assent." 

But he recognized that the problem had 
long since passed that stage. In his 
Peoria speech, when he stepped forth as 
the champion of freedom, he frankly ad- 
mitted that, " If all earthly power were 
given me I should not know what to do as 
to the existing institution. My first im- 
pulse would be to free all the slaves and 
send them to Liberia, to their own native 
land. But a moment's reflection would 
convince me that whatever of high hope (as 
I think there is) there may be in this in the 
long run, its sudden execution is impossible. 
If they were all landed there in a day they 
would all perish in the next ten days." 

Every actual observation deepened his 
natural convictions. Yet he did not allow 

339 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

his feelings to carry away his reason. He 
remembered that the practice was rooted in 
custom, and entrenched in constitution and 
law. To cut it out would be to endanger 
the national life. Also, while his heartfelt 
compassion went out to the slave, he had 
broad charity for the slave-holder, domi- 
nated by education, local prejudice and 
property interests. 

This enabled him at the very beginning 
of his career to strike that key-note in 
statesmanship through which he wrought 
one of the world's great political reforms. 
He had been but two years in the legisla- 
ture of Illinois when that body passed reso- 
lutions " highly disapproving abolition so- 
cieties," and declaring that " the right of 
property in slaves is secured to the slave- 
holding States by the Federal Constitu- 
tion," the identical proposition in support 
of which the South began civil war. Lin- 
coln and five others voted against it. In 
addition, in order not to leave their senti- 

S40 



HIS REASON AND 11 K A U T 

mcnts in doubt, hv and one oilier incmber 
signed a written protest and entered it on 
the journal, reciting their belief tliat tlie 
institution of slavery was founded on bolli 
injustice and bad policy, but that Congress 
had no power to interfere with it in the 
States, and that while it had power to abol- 
ish it in the District of Columbia, it ouglit 
only to exercise that power at the request 
of the people of the District. 

Conservative as this seems, it required at 
that day a sturdy political courage to sign 
such a document, in face of the violent 
prejudice against everything savoring of 
" abolitionism." It was in that same year 
that a mob at Alton, IHInoIs, shot to deatli 
Elijah P. Lovejoy for persisting in his 
right to print an anti-slavery newspaper. 

Twelve years afterward, during his term 
in Congress, Lincoln presented a bill 
for compensated emancipation — his plan 
for making the path of righteousness easier 
to the slave-owner, and the path toward 

341 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

liberty less dangerous for the slave. By its 
provisions masters were to receive money 
value for their property, and the slaves ade- 
quate guardianship and training for their 
new life. It could be accomplished only 
with the full consent of the owners, and he 
proposed to try it experimentally in the 
District of Columbia, a territory so small 
that its workings could be easily watched 
and any dangerous tendencies noted. The 
measure had the approval both of the con- 
servative citizens of Washington, and of 
the anti-slavery leaders in Congress ; but it 
failed to become a law, party heat being 
already too great to admit of moderate 
legislation. He could save neither sinned 
against nor sinners. In the poetic imagery 
of the Second Inaugural, it was decreed that 
the blood drawn by the lash must be paid 
for in blood drawn by the sword. 

All Lincoln's study of the question dur- 
ing the years that separated his Peoria 
speech from his taking the oath of office as 

342 



HIS REASON AND HEART 

President confirmed liim in his early belief 
that slavery was lawful in the Southern 
States, and that where this was the case the 
only remedy lay with the people living In 
those States. All his effort was directed 
toward preventing its spread into Federal 
territory, where, he held, the Government 
had a right to interfere. When he took 
the oath as President he assumed the of- 
ficial responsibility of the judge, who can- 
not allow his individual feelings to supplant 
the mandates of the law. 

Then came the Civil War. If Lincoln 
had been only a political theorist, he would 
have taken this opportunity to declare that 
by appealing to arms slavery had subjected 
itself to the risks of war, and would have 
at once launched against it his subsequent 
decree of military emancipation. But his 
education had made him first of all a prac- 
tical statesman, and practical statesman- 
ship demanded the maintenance of the in- 
tegrity and power of the Union first of all. 

343 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

Rash reforms like that proposed by Fre- 
mont and antislavery radicals would im- 
peril the Union, and to permit the Union 
to die was to permit slavery to live. So, 
champion of freedom though he was, he an- 
nulled Fremont's proclamation. 

His paramount duty he emphasized in 
his letter answering the criticisms of Hor- 
ace Greeley. 

As to the policy I " seem to be pursuing," 
as you say, I have not meant to leave any one 
in doubt. I would save the Union. I would 
save it the shortest way under the Consti- 
tution. ... If there be those who would 
not save the Union unless they could at 
the same time destroy slavery, I do not agree 
with them. My paramount object in this 
struggle is to save the Union, and not either 
to save or to destroy slavery. . . . What I 
do about slavery and the colored race I do 
because I believe it helps to save the Union, 
and what I forbear I forbear because I do 
not believe it would help to save the Union. 

344 



HIS REASON ANM) II K A R T 

I shall do less wlicnever I shall believe what 
I am doing hurts the cause, and I sh ,JI ,j„ 
more whenever I shall believe ch.ing more 
will help the cause. ... I have here statrd 
my purpose according to my view of official 
duty; and I intend no modification of my oft- 
expressed personal wish that all men every- 
where could be free. 

He had a broader aim than more con- 
quest of the South. A true restoration of 
the Union must include a renewal of fra- 
ternal sympathy between the sections. In 
this spirit he recommended and Congress 
adopted his old policy of compensated abol- 
ishment — the offer of a money equivalent 
to States that would voluntarily relinquish 
slavery, holding it to be a remedy at once 
more effectual, more humane, and far less 
costly than war. The offer was refused, 
yet its spirit secured the adhesion of the 
border States to the Union, pushing the mil- 
itary frontier down from the Ohio River to 
the Tennessee line, and adding during the 

345 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

war more than 225,000 volunteers to the 
Union armies. 

The rejection of this generous offer, and 
simultaneous reverses to McClellan's army 
before Richmond brought about the mili- 
tary necessity which justified Lincoln in 
using his authority as Commander-in-Chief 
of the army to issue his proclamation of 
mihtary emancipation. Important as was 
this act, the signing of the decree was only 
an incident in the battle he was commis- 
sioned to wage, and about which he had 
recorded his well-considered resolve, " I ex- 
pect to maintain this contest until success- 
ful, or till I die, or am conquered, or my 
term expires, or Congress or the country 
forsake me." The great issue was not the 
bondage of a race, but the life of a nation, 
a principle of government, a question of 
primary human right. 

The country accepted the edict of eman- 
cipation as wise and necessary, but whether 
it would be held valid in law, Lincoln 

846 



HIS REASON ANM3 HEART 

frankly said he did not know. If tl,e re- 
bellion should triumph, manifestly the 
proclamation would be so much waste pa- 
per. If the Union were victorious, every 
step of that victory would be clothed with 
the mantle of law. That was the lesson 
of all history; the philosophy of govern- 
ment. 

Of one thing he was sure. Plaving is- 
sued his proclamation he would never re- 
tract or modify it. The freed slaves had 
done their part. They had been armed 
and had fought shoulder to shoulder with 
the whites, bravely and well. To restore 
the Union with their help, under a pledge 
of liberty, and then, under whatever legal 
construction, to attempt to reenslave them, 
would be a moral monstrosity — would be, 
in the language of one of his early 
speeches, "to repeal human nature." 
" There have been men base enough to pro- 
pose to me to retuni to slavery our black 
warriors of Port Hudson and Olustee," he 

S4>7 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

said. " Should I do so, I should deserve to 
be damned in time and eternity." 

He wished the voluntary consent of the 
States to his act, and therefore set in mo- 
tion the machinery of a constitutional 
amendment. Lincoln did not live to see it 
a part of the Constitution, but it became so 
less than a year after his death. 

These measures, taken in orderly se- 
quence, in strict pursuance of duty, had 
brought about through his agency the end 
he desired and thought so very far away. 
His reason might well have been satisfied. 
But his heart was not yet content. As 
the war drew to its close his kindness went 
out more and more to these enemies who 
were yet brothers. When he met the Con- 
federate commissioners at Hampton Roads, 
and through his sympathy and intuition di- 
vined their undercurrent of hopelessness, 
he told them that he personally would favor 
payment by the Federal Government of a 
liberal indemnity for the loss of slave prop- 

348 



HIS REASON AND II K A It T 

ertj, on absolute cessation of I he war, and 
voluntary abolition of slavery in the Soulli- 
ern States. 

He spent the day after his return from 
this meeting in perfecting a new i)r()p()sal 
designed as a peace offering to the South, 
and that evening called his cabinet to- 
gether and read them the draft of a joint 
resolution and a proclamation offering the 
Southern States $400,000,000 on condition 
that the Thirteenth Amendment be ratified 
by the requisite number of States before 
July first, 1865. But this was a height of 
altruism to which his constitutional advis- 
ers could not follow him. " You are all 
opposed to me," he said sadly, as he folded 
the paper and ended the discussion. But 
he still continued to ponder offers of 
friendship. In the last public speech he 
made, to a crowd of people gathered in 
front of the Executive INIansion to cele- 
brate Grant's victory, he hinted at some 
new announcement he was considering and 

349 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

would soon make to the South. Can it be 
doubted it was as generous as this one? 

Such, in a broad way, were Lincoln's 
achievements and action on slavery. He 
wrought in the great field of original 
statesmanship, and the Archimedean lever 
whereby he moved the world was public 
opinion. Under his guidance, in the swift 
rush of events, results came to pass in a 
decade that had seemed like hopes a hun- 
dred years removed. For this he took 
to himself no credit. " I claim not to have 
controlled events," he said, " but frankly 
admit that events have controlled me." 
And again, " My policy is to have no pol- 
icy." Keeping in view his large ideal and 
ultimate aim, he disposed of each individual 
problem as it came up, though this led 
him into the apparent inconsistency of re- 
fusing to arm negro soldiers, then of arm- 
ing them, of revoking military proclama- 
tions of emancipation, then of issuing a 
great and sweeping edict of freedom — 

350 



HIS REASON AND I Ii: A R T 

once it ]cd liim into actually ofTcriii^r to l>uy 
a slave for $500. 

Lincoln's reply to the minister who anx- 
iously « hoped the Lord was on his side," 
summed up his creed and his practice. He 
said that did not trouble liim in the least. 
His great concern was that he and the 
country should be on the side of the Lord. 

Mention has been made of Lincoln's 
extreme reluctance to approve the death 
penalty. This was not the outcome of 
sentimental regard for soldiers. In 1862 
a very serious Lidian uprising with atro- 
cious massacres took place in Minnesota. 
After it was quelled a court-martial tried 
the prisoners, and under the impulse of 
popular indignation sentenced about three 
hundred to be hanged. Learning of this 
the President ordered the execution stayed, 
and the testimony forw^arded to him. Let- 
ters and telegrams poured in upon him, 
begging him to allow the sentences to 
stand; but determined to have no hasty sac- 

351 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

rifice, he patiently investigated each case 
for himself, finally confirming the sentences 
of less than forty out of the three hundred, 
these being cases where reliable witnesses 
testified to seeing the men actually en- 
gaged in acts of atrocity. In forward- 
ing the testimony to the Senate he stated 
his anxiety " to not act with so much clem- 
ency as to encourage another outbreak on 
the one hand, nor with so much severity as 
to be real cruelty on the other." 

For red and white alike he stood firm in 
his determination to execute only the de- 
crees of justice. 

'' In considering the policy to be 
adopted for suppressing the insurrection 
I have been anxious and careful that the 
inevitable conflict for this purpose shall 
not degenerate into a violent and remorse- 
less revolutionary struggle," he told Con- 
gress in his first annual message. Both his 
reason and his heart forbade him to sanc- 
tion measures of retaliation urged for the 

352 



HIS REASON AND UK ART 

massacre of negro soldiers at Fort Pillow. 
Frederick Douglas, the colored man, with 
whom he talked on this siihjoct, said, ^' I 
shall never forget the benignant expression 
of his face, the tearful look of his eye, and 
the quiver of his voice." He could not 
take men out and kill them in cold blood 
for Avhat was done by others. " Once be- 
gun," he said, " I do not know where such 
a measure would stop." 

The same question came up in regard 
to the treatment of prisoners, and received 
the same answer. It was argued that if 
men were starved at Libby Prison and An- 
dersonville, the same treatment should be 
meted out to Confederates. "Whatever 
others may say or do I never can, and I 
never will, be accessory to such treatment 
of human beings," he said. 

The question of prisoners lay heavy on 
his heart. General Butler told of a day 
when the President was visiting his com- 
mand. They had gone through the hos- 
^3 353 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

pitals, and the wards of wounded Con- 
federate prisoners, and he had brought 
hght and cheer by his presence. After- 
ward as they sat at dinner he was weary 
and depressed. The General was pained 
to see that his guest did not eat, and asked 
if he were ilL " I am well enough," he re- 
plied, pushing away his plate, " but would 
to God this dinner or provisions like it 
were with our poor prisoners in Anderson- 
ville." 

As the war drew to its close the ques- 
tions of exchanging prisoners, and of the 
treatment of Southern leaders, assumed 
larger proportions. Secretary Welles, 
who found time to write many things in 
his " deadly diary," moralized thus : 

This war is extraordinary in all its aspects 
and phases^ and no man is prepared to meet 
tliem. ... I have often thought that greater 
severity might well be exercised, and yet it 
would tend to barbarism. No traitor has 
been hung. I doubt if there will be; but an 

S54, 



HIS REASON AND II K A R T 

example sliould be made of some of the lead- 
ers, for present and for future good. They 
may, if taken, be imi)risoned, or driv.n into 
exile, but neither would be lasting. Parties 
would form for their relief, and ultimately 
succeed in restoring the worst of them to 
their homes and the privileges they originally 
enjoyed. Death is the proper penalty and 
atonement. . . . But I apprehend there will 
be very gentle measures in closing uj) tlic 
rebellion. 

He knew his chief. The full difference 
in their mental make-up is shown in an en- 
try in this same diary four months later. 
" Oct. 5, 1864. The President came to see 
me pretty early this morning in relation 
to the exchange of prisoners. It had 
troubled him during the night." 

Lincoln's care was not how to make the 
punishment lasting, but how best to heal 
the scars of war. An endorsement on a 
paper that passed between him and the 
War Department shows his whole attitude. 

355 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

" On principle I dislike an oath which 
requires a man to swear he has not d6ne 
wrong. It rejects the Christian principle 
of forgiveness on terms of repentance. I 
think it is enough if the man does no 
wrong hereafter." 

He frankly admitted that he hoped the 
leaders of the rebellion would escape. " If 
you have an elephant on your hands, and 
he w ants to run away — better let him 
run ! " he said. And with similar intent 
he told the story of a boy who, with much 
expenditure of time and energy had ac- 
quired a coon, only to find him a great 
nuisance. He could not, however, bring 
himself to admit this to his family. One 
day, leading it along the road, he had more 
than he could do to manage the little vixen. 
At length, with clothes torn, and muscles 
weary, he sank to the ground, tired out. 
A gentleman passing, asked what was the 
matter. 

" Oh, this coon is such a trouble to me." 
356 



HIS REASON AND JI KAUT 

" Why don't you gd rid of l.i,,,, tlun? " 
"Hush," said the boy. "Don't you 
sec, he is gnawing his rope off? That is 
just what I want. I ',n going to let hin. 
do It, and then I can go home and tell the 
folks he got away from me." 

On April 11 Lincohi spoke from a win- 
dow of the Wliite House to a largo and 
joyful crowd, gathered in honor of Leu's 
surrender. The President's speech was 
full of conciliation. Senator Harlan fol- 
lowed, and in the course of his remarks, 
touched on the thought uppermost in ev- 
erybody's mind. " What shall we do with 
the rebels?" he asked. A voice answered 
from the crowd, " Hang them ! " 

Lincoln's small son w^as in the room, 
playing with the pens on the table. Look- 
ing up he caught his father's pained ex- 
pression. 

"No, no, Papa," he cried in his child- 
ish voice. " Not hang them. Hang on to 
them ! " 

357 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

"That is it! Tad has got it. We 
must hang on to them ! " the President ex- 
claimed in triumph. 

Lincoln's final official act was writing, 
" Let it be done," on the petition of a Con- 
federate prisoner who desired to take the 
oath of allegiance. " I think this will take 
precedence of Stanton," he is reported to 
have said, for Stanton wished to hedge re- 
habilitation about with more safeguards. 

In the cabinet meeting on that last 
morning of his life he talked in a strain of 
the utmost friendliness toward the South. 
No one need expect him to take any part 
in hanging these men, even the worst of 
them. Enough lives had been sacrificed. 
Anger must be put aside. 

With words like these on his lips, and a 
gladness in his heart which found expres- 
sion in a physical embrace of his rough and 
prickly friend Stanton, he closed their last 
cabinet session. 



358 



XVII 

LINCOLN THE WRITER 

LINCOLN knew no foreign tongue, 
yet he spoke two languages — the 
vernacular, and a strong, majestic prose, 
akin to poetry. He used one and then 
the other, as best suited his audience or the 
nature of his subject ; but whatever the lan- 
guage, it expressed high aims, for he had 
only one moral code. 

Growing up among very simple people, 
he acquired a plainness of manner, both 
in thought and speech, which differ- 
entiated him, all his days, from the 
statesmen nurtured in ease and plenty. 
The Boston Transcript, commenting on 
his first inaugural, called it " the plain 

359 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

homespun language of a man of the peo- 
ple, who was accustomed to talk with ' the 
folks,' " — " the language of a man of vital 
common sense, whose words exactly fitted 
his facts and thoughts." 

This simplicity shocked not a few. It 
was not living up to the popular concep- 
tion of a statesman. The echoes wakened 
by our great orators were still rolling over 
the land, and every budding politician was 
expected to rival them. A soaring perora- 
tion was deemed as essential to a speech as 
the " Fellow citizens " with which it 
opened. Lincoln, with his straightfor- 
ward sentences made up of short forceful 
words, was not playing the game accord- 
ing to accepted rules. Ex-president Tyler 
complained that he did not even play it 
according to rules of grammar. 

In his later years Lincoln used to repeat 
with glee the picturesque description of a 
Southwestern orator who " mounted the 
rostrum, threw back his head, shined his 

360 



LINCOLN THE W H i i 1. K 

ejcs, opened Iiis moutli, and I.ff the conse- 
quences to God." This was an cxrrcis.. „f 
faith In which he never indnl^nd, f|„,„^rl, )„. 
passed through a period of nsin^r H,, 
rather florid eloquence of the stump speech 
with great effect. Studies in tl,e hiw en- 
courage neither flights of fancy nor misuse 
of words. His scrupulous regard for 
truth, and his own good sense, speedily 
corrected any leaning toward extravagant 
metaphor. 

In one of Lincoln's early speeches in 
New England he expressed a " feeling of 
real modesty" in addressing an audience 
" this side the mountains," where every- 
body was supposed to be instructed and 
wise. He had the unschooled man's wist- 
ful admiration and longing for educational 
advantages which had been denied him; 
and until convinced by contact and much 
experience with men trained in the best 
routine machines of learning, actually ex- 
pected to suffer by comparison. It is quite 

361 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

possible that up to the very last he was 
astonished, and a bit disappointed to find 
that he held his own so well beside them. 

He had, too, the genuine admiration 
for the arts and for science common to 
many Westerners whose taste and appre- 
ciation have outrun their opportunities, 
and he enjoyed talking with men of these 
pursuits — looking, as it were, through 
their eyes into a world so different from his 
own. Professor Joseph Henry was one 
of the rare men in Washington in those 
days. The two were mutually attracted, 
though too busy to see much of each other. 
The scientist was astonished at the Presi- 
dent's intelligent grasp of subjects about 
which he professed entire ignorance. " He 
is producing a powerful impression upon 
me," he confessed, " more powerful than 
any one I can now recall. It increases 
with every interview. I think it my duty 
to take philosophic views of men and 
things, but the President upsets me. If I 

362 



LINCOLN THE WRITER 

did not resist the inclination, 1 nii<rlil even 
fall in love with him." Lincoln on his side 
admitted that until meeting Professor 
Henry he supposed the Smithsonian to be 
a rather useless institution. ** But," he 
said, " it must be a grand school if it pro- 
duces such thinkers as he." 

The President was fond of music, in a 
frank untutored way, though he had not an 
excruciatingly sensitive ear. The clash of 
regimental bands playing against each 
other, which drove Colonel Baker to dis- 
traction at a certain review, did not dis- 
turb him in the least. Perhaps it is better 
to say that he liked the idea of nnisic — 
the sound and swing of martial tunes, and 
the pathos of a simple ballad. He must 
have been unconsciously sensitive to 
rhythm, for he read poetry uncommonly 
well, and his own prose at its best has a 
movement as inevitable as that of a march- 
ing column. 

There is a popular saying that only 
363 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

three books are needed to complete a li- 
brary — the Bible, Blackstone and Shak- 
spere. He had delved deep in all three. 
His lawj^er's training is visible in every- 
thing he wrote, down to the smallest scrap, 
in a clearness of expression which leaves 
no chance for misunderstanding either the 
fact stated or his own motive. But it has, 
too, that indefinable literary elegance 
called style. In the sentence quoted in the 
last chapter, for instance, " I expect to 
maintain this contest until successful, or 
till I die, or am conquered, or my term ex- 
pires, or Congress or the countrj^ forsake 
me," no possible lawyer-loophole is left un- 
guarded, yet because of its diction it is 
neither redundant nor ungraceful. 

His familiarity with and use of Biblical 
phraseology was remarkable even in a time 
when such use was more common than now. 
We are told that he read Shakspere more 
than all other writers put together. When 
only two or three were present he was fond 

364 



LINCOLN THE VV R 1 T K R 

of reading aloud from the tragedies or the 
historical plays. John Hay tells us that 
" he passed many of the summer evenings 
in this way when occupying his cottage at 
the Soldiers' Home. . . , the plays he 
most affected were ' Hamlet,' * Macheth,' 
and the series of histories. Among these 
he never tired of ' Richard II.' The ter- 
rible outburst of grief and despair into 
which Richard falls in the third act had a 
peculiar fascination for him." ]\Ir. Hay 
heard him read it at Springfield, at the 
White House, and at the Soldiers' Home. 

For God's sake, let us sit upon the ground 

And tell sad stories of the death of kings: 

How some have been deposed; some slain in 

war; 
Some haunted by the ghosts they have de- 
posed; 
Some poison'd by their wives, some sleeping 

kill'd; 
All murdered: for within the hollow crown 
That rounds the mortal temples of a king 

S65 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

Keeps Death his court; and there the antic 

sits, 
Scoffing his staie, and grinning at his pomp, 
Allowing him a breath, a little scene. 
To monarchize, be fear'd, and kill with 

looks. 
Infusing him with self and vain conceit, 
As if this flesh, which walls about our life. 
Were brass impregnable, and humor'd thus 
Comes at the last and with a little pin 
Bores through the castle walls, and — fare- 
well, king! 

He liked to see these same plays acted. 
Apparently he cared more for the acting 
of men than of women — more for Hack- 
ett, for instance, than for Charlotte Cush- 
man. He was so delighted with Hackett's 
Falsi aff that he wrote the veteran actor a 
letter, which through an indiscretion on 
the latter's part, was printed in the New 
York Herald with accompanying abuse. 
Hackett, greatly mortified, made profound 
apologies, to which the President replied 

$66 



LINCOLN THE WRIT J : R 

in the kindest manner, that thourrh l,e had 
not expected to see his note in print, it had 
not distressed liim. "These connnents 
constitute a fair specimen of what has oc- 
curred to me throufvh life. I have endured 
a great deal of ridicule without nnich mal- 
ice and have received a great deal of kind- 
ness not quite free from ridicule. I am 
used to it." 

He told a friend that he had never read 
a whole novel in his life, though he once 
began " Ivanhoe." Occasionally he read a 
scientific work with deep interest, but his 
busy life left him little time for such indul- 
gence. During his Presidency the little 
leisure that he had for reading was de- 
voted, almost of necessity, to works on 
military science. 

" The music of Lincoln's thought was 
always in a minor key," my father wrote. 
Of modern poems the sad or reminiscent 
appealed to him — like Holmes's '* Last 
Leaf," Hood's "Haunted House," and 

367 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

" Oh, why should the spirit of mortal be 
proud? " 

Among his own writings are found a 
few bits of verse. On the Day of Judg- 
ment few indeed will be the public men 
who will not have to face a similar charge. 
Lincoln's verses were inspired by revisiting 
his old home, " within itself as unpoetical 
as any spot on the earth," he admitted, but 
which " aroused feelings in me which were 
certainly poetry, though whether my ex- 
pression of these feelings- is poetry, is 
quite another question." 

Certain other fragments — one on Ni- 
agara Falls, notes for a law lecture, and a 
more extended paper, the skeleton, partly 
clothed, of a lecture on " Discoveries, In- 
ventions and Improvements," which he de- 
livered a few times in Springfield and 
neighboring towns in 1859 and I860, are 
all that we have of his efforts at self ex- 
pression on subjects other than his con- 
trolling inspiration. 

368 



LINCOLN THE W U IT i; r 

One who heard the lecture describL-d it 
as longer and containing several fine pas- 
sages not in the printed copy. It is easy 
to see that even as it stands, Lincohi's 
smile and manner would have made another 
thing of it. Even in print tiiere are a 
few bits wittily his own, like the characteri- 
zation of Young America — "lie owns a 
large part of the world by right of possess- 
ing it, and all the rest by right of wanting 
it and intending to have it." 

The probability is that all these were 
composed within that period of compara- 
tive leisure between the end of his term in 
Congress and the day when the repeal of 
the Missouri Compromise unchained the 
new political controversy. He attached 
no undue importance to them. Refusing 
an invitation to lecture in the spring of 
1859, he wrote: "I cannot do so now. I 
must stick to the courts awhile. I read a 
sort of lecture to three different audiences 
during the last month and this, but I did 
24 369 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

so under circumstances which made it a 
waste of no time whatever." 

At what time Lincoln began the compo- 
sition of his first inaugural was unknown, 
even to his secretary. My father's opin- 
ion was that while he did not set himself 
seriously to this task until the result of the 
election had been ascertained beyond 
doubt, it is quite possible that it had been 
considered with great deliberation during 
the summer, and that sentences and per- 
haps paragraphs of it had been put in 
writing. Mr. Lincoln often resorted to 
the process of cumulative thought, and his 
constant tendency to and great success in 
axiomatic definition resulted in a large 
measure from a habit he had of reducing 
a forcible idea to writing, and keeping it 
till further reasoning enabled him to elab- 
orate or conclude his point or argument. 
There were many of these scraps among 
his papers — seldom in the shape of mere 

370 



LINCOLN TH K W R 1 T K R 

rough notes ; almost always as a finished 
proposition or statement. 

It was about one of his political letters, 
the Conlvling letter of August 2(), ISGJ^, 
that John Hay wrote to my fatlR-r with 
irrepressible youthful enthusiasm : 

" His last letter is a great thing. Some 
hideously bad rhetoric . . . yet the whole 
letter takes its solid place in history as the 
great utterance of a great man. The 
whole cabinet could not have tinkered up 
a letter which could have compared with 
it. He can snake a sophism out of its 
hole better than all the trained logicians 
of all schools. I do not know whether the 
nation is worthy of him. . . ." 

This Conkling letter has been called 
" his last stump speech." It has in it all 
the qualities which made him the leader of 
his party in Illinois for a generation — 
the close reasoning, the innate perception 
of political conduct, wit, sarcasm, and 

371 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

that picturesque eloquence which abounded 
in his earher and more careless oratory. 
But all are strengthened and intensified 
by a sense of his great responsibility. 
" The Father of Waters again goes un- 
vexed to the sea," " All the watery mar- 
gins " of our land, and " Man's vast fu- 
ture," with their poetic note, are balanced 
by statements as irrefutable as that two 
and two make four, and his axiom that 
" there can be no appeal from the ballot 
to the bullet " — Nowhere a syllable that 
could be dispensed with, nowhere a word 
lacking. 

Modest as he was, Lincoln knew the 
value of his work. When a friend asked 
him if he meant to attend the mass meeting 
in Springfield to which Mr. Conkling's let- 
ter was an invitation, he replied, 

" No. I shall send them a letter in- 
stead, and it will be a rather good letter." 

Although a ready impromptu speaker, 
he made for himself a rule to which he ad- 

372 



LINCOLN THE WRIT K II 

hered during his Presidency. This was to 
say nothing in public that he had not first 
committed to writing. Reprimands to dc- 
hnquent officials, the little speech on pre- 
sentnig Grant his commission as Lieuten- 
ant General, and the speeches of formal 
ceremony to diplomats, as well as the far 
more intimate lecture to his cabinet, were 
all carefully written beforehand. 

When he delivered the Gettysburg Ad- 
dress he held the paper in his hand, but 
did not read from it. It was " in a firm 
free way, with more grace than is his 
wont " that he " said his half dozen lines 
of consecration." " And the music wailed, 
and we went home through crowded and 
cheering streets — and all the particulars 
are in the daily papers," John Hay wrote. 
Next day Edward Everett sent the Pres- 
ident a note of thanks for personal cour- 
tesies received, and of appreciation of the 
address. " I should be glad if I could 
flatter myself that I had come as near the 

373 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

central idea of the occasion in two hours 
as jou did in two minutes." 

Mr. Lincoln answered, " In our respect- 
ive parts yesterday you could not have 
been excused to make a short address, nor 
I a long one. I am pleased to know that 
in your judgment, the little I did say was 
not entirely a failure. Of course I knew 
Mr. Everett would not fail." 

Much has been written to prove that 
neither Lincoln nor the country was satis- 
fied with the address, and that it was re- 
served for English critics to discover its 
wonderful beauty. The only direct evi- 
dence lies in this letter to Edward Everett, 
which may or may not conceal more mean- 
ing than a conventional answer to a merited 
compliment. The probability is that 
though he thought the address not nearly 
so bad as some would have us imagine, he 
did not dream that the world would acclaim 
it a masterpiece. He would doubtless have 
been astonished, and the first to protest, 

374 



LINCOLN THE W R I T K R 

had he been told that he was a ^rcat writer. 
Yet the world so holds him; and siirelv in 
elevation of thought and nobility* of 
expression it is hard to find his superior. 

Sherman called his style " the unaffeeted 
and spontaneous eloquence of the heart." 
It was indeed an eloquence of the heart. 
His early striving after lucid brevity, and 
his dramatic sense, gave him the power of 
expressing ideas in short and forceful 
terms. His moral purpose made him a 
teacher whose voice carried far. To this 
he had attained before he became Presi- 
dent. But it was the experience of the 
Presidency which brought to full flower 
another quality, a beauty of phrase and a 
benignity of expression only hinted at in 
his earlier writings. 

" We shall nobly save or meanly lose, 
the last, best hope of earth." " It is 
rather for us to be here dedicated to the 
great task remaining before us — that 
from these honored dead we take increased 

375 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

devotion to that cause for which they gave 
the last full measure of devotion." " I 
have not willingly planted a thorn in any 
man's bosom." " We must not sully vic- 
tory with harshness." " With malice to- 
ward none ; with charity for all ; with firm- 
ness in the right as God gives us to see the 
right, let us strive on to finish the work we 
are in, to bind up the nation's wounds ; to 
care for him who shall have borne the bat- 
tle, and for his widow, and his orphan — to 
do all which may achieve and cherish a just 
and lasting peace among ourselves, and 
with all nations." 

Before his election he might have writ- 
ten, " Fellow citizens, we cannot escape 
history ! " But he could not have spoken 
the " half dozen lines of consecration " at 
Gettysburg, or the marvelous words of the 
Second Inaugural. 

It was his suffering — the thorny path 
he trod, carrying a nation's grief, which 
gave his words their final majesty. 

376 



XVIII 



HIS MORAL FIBER 



A FEW characters live in history un- 
circumscribed by time or place. 
They may have died ten centuries or ten 
days ago; we feel them to be as vital and 
as modern as ourselves. 

It is hard to think of Lincoln in any en- 
vironment except our own, yet the country 
he knew was vastly different. The Civil 
War bridged a gulf wider than we realize. 
Up to that time America had been the land 
of individual effort, where those who were 
dissatisfied could go on into the wilder- 
ness and work out their doom or their sal- 
vation unmolested. The very peopling 
of the continent had been a protest against 

377 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

despotism — against doing things the way 
some one else decreed. In our early at- 
tempts at concerted government conces- 
sions toward central power were given 
grudgingly, and sometimes withdrawn 
again, in spite of demonstrated success. 
We accepted the motto, " In union is 
strength," officially ; in private we pinned 
our faith to its opposite — " every man 
for himself." 

By its mere magnitude the Civil War 
compelled a change. The struggle as- 
sumed such vast proportions that Ameri- 
cans were forced to think in a new way — 
to do things together in large masses, to 
contemplate immense quantities, to calcu- 
late stupendous sums. 

A volunteer army is in essence coopera- 
tion, and four years' training in the possi- 
bilities of voluntary cooperation taught 
the nation the value of " team work." At 
the end of the struggle over a million men, 
trained in these new ways, carried their 

378 



HIS MORAL FIBER 

knowledge back into civil life, and spread 
it through the business world. If the 
germ of secession lay hidden In the hold of 
the Dutch slaver that sailed up the James 
River in 1619, the inception of present in- 
dustrial methods was breathed in by both 
Union and Confederate armies as they lay 
in the swamps of Virginia. 

Just enough poison may be a tonic, 
though too much is a deadly drug. In- 
dividualism did its great work on this con- 
tinent, but, pushed to its conclusion, 
would have brought ruin. This new force 
quickened the pulse of national life so 
that the waste of war was repaired with 
unheard-of speed ; and now men wonder 
how much farther it is wise to pursue the 
same course. 

Remembering the wisdom of Lincoln 
who presided over the other great change, 
people have sought to make him a prophet 
for this generation. Not finding what 
they wanted among his words, the un- 

379 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

scrupulous have not hesitated to invent 
them. My father once made a list of a 
dozen or more spurious quotations and 
allegations concerning Lincoln; but the 
one he was most often called upon to deny, 
was this : 

Yes, we can all congratulate ourselves that 
this cruel war is drawing to a close. It has 
cost a vast amount of treasure and blood. 
The best blood of the flower of American 
youth has been freely offered upon our coun- 
try's altar that the nation might live. It has 
been a trying hour for the republic, but I 
see in the near future a crisis arising which 
unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the 
safety of my country. As a result of the 
war, corporations have been enthroned, and 
an era of corruption in high places will fol- 
low, and the money power of the country 
will endeavor to prolong its reign by working 
upon the prejudices of the people until all 
wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the 
republic is destroyed. I feel at this time 
more anxiety for the safety of my country 

380 



HIS MORAL FIBKU 

than ever before, even in the midst of thr 
war. God grant that my fears may prove 
groundless ! 

This alleged quotation seems to have 
made its first appearance in the Presiden- 
tial campaign of 1888, and it has returned 
with planetary regularity ever since. 
Although convinced by internal evidence 
of its falsity, my father made every effort 
to trace it to its source, but could find no 
responsible or respectable clue. The truth 
is that Lincoln was no prophet of a distant 
day. His heart and mind were busy with 
the problems of his own time. The legacy 
he left his countrymen was not the warn- 
ing of a seer, but an example and an ob- 
ligation to face their own dark shadows 
with the sanity and courageous inde- 
pendence he showed in looking upon those 
that confronted him. 

His early life was essentially of the old 
era. He made his own career by indi- 



381 



/^ 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

vidual effort. His childhood, on the edge 
of civilization, had on the one side the 
freedom of the wilderness, and on the other 
the very few simple things which have been 
garnered as necessities from the world's 
useless belongings. His lawyer's earn- 
ings, at their highest, were only a pittance, 
by modern estimate; and a hundred de- 
tails of his letters and daily life — like 
his invitation to an audience in the Lin- 
coln-Douglas campaign, to meet him " at 
candle-light," which was not a figure of 
speech but an actual condition, showed how 
completely he was part of that vanished 
time. 

Yet when the change came he led the 
country out of old ways into new. Rising 
above the hatred and bitterness of the 
struggle, he held attention to the great and 
enduring principles which made such a 
sacrifice of life not only tolerable, but 
holy. By force of his own personality he 
shamed men into contempt for vindictive- 

382 



HIS M C) U A L F I 15 K R 

ness and meanness; and doing so, rol)hi'(i 
war of its bitterest sting. 

His sudden elevation to the Presidency 
had no deteriorating effect upon his (\un\- 
ities of head or of heart. His mental 
equipoise remained undisturbed, his moral 
sensitiveness unblunted, his simpllcltv of 
manner unchanged, his strong Individual- 
ity untouched. His responsibilities served 
only to clear his judgment, confirm his 
courage and broaden and deepen his hu- 
manity. 

Dwellers on mountain tops are lonely. 
The very clearness of his mind, and the 
largeness of his view, conspired to rob him 
of companionship in the sense of intel- 
lectual equality. A vainer man might have 
felt this. Lincoln, entirely without ego- 
tism, grasped the greater fact of human 
brotherhood, and found interest and com- 
panionship in the fact of a common hu- 
manity. 

He had no false pride about little 
383 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

things ; no false modesty about great ones. 
He knew that he had a great part to play, 
and played it simply, earnestly. He had 
no illusions but also, no bitterness. He 
did have strong affections, a very real 
craving for sympathy, a merry wit, and 
an infinite capacity for pain. He was a 
man of patience, of faith, of broad princi- 
ples, of high aspirations ; accepting with- 
out rude rebuff any good he could secure 
for the moment, yet all the while shaping 
and preparing in meditation and silent 
hope the path by which the nation might 
mount to higher levels. 

This man of no illusions lived very close 
to mystery. From the day he stood be- 
side his father in the unhealthful shade of 
Pigeon Cove, a little heart-sick boy, 
watching the whip-saw eat its way 
through the green wood that was to make 
coffins for his mother and the others who 
had died of the dreadful " milk sick- 
ness," to the night before he was mur- 
• 584 



HIS ]VI O R A L F I B 1<: R 

dered, when he dreamed again liis 
recurrent dream of the strange slilp liur- 
rying toward a dark and unknown shore, 
he seemed always to feel the unseen very 
near. 

Every act of his private life, and every 
public paper he sent forth, testified not 
only to his belief in, but to his reliance 
upon, a power higher and wiser than him- 
self, " The purposes of the Almighty are 
perfect and must prevail," he wrote, 
" though we erring mortals may fail to 
accurately perceive them in advance. . . . 
We shall yet acknowledge His wisdom and 
our own error therein. Meanwhile we 
must work earnestly in the best lights He 
gives us, trusting that so working still con- 
duces to the great end He ordains." 

In its reverence for the words and acts 
of Christ the civilized world has set up Its 
standard of moral philosophy. Judged 
by this standard Lincoln must be 
accorded preeminence among his contem- 
ns 385 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

poraries. A patriot in his complete 
devotion to his Government and its Con- 
stitution, his greatness of soul rose above 
patriotism and acknowledged the right of 
every human being made in God's image 
to his personal act of kindness and mercy 
— not as an act of grace from a mighty 
ruler, as he was; but as a service com- 
manded ahke by the laws of man and God. 
In the practice of justice, of patriotism, 
of mercy — in the utter oblivion of self, 
"with malice toward none, with charity 
for all," he followed in the footsteps of 
the Galilean. 

Fate placed him at the cross-roads of 
national destiny. The muse of history 
thrust before him a blank tablet and bade 
him write upon it the life or death of the 
New World republic. It is our privilege 
to read from that tablet the record of a 
Union presented, and a new conception of 
dominion, majesty and power, tempered 
by the Golden Rule. But at that time no 

386 



HIS MORAL FIBER 

mortal, not even he who was to writi-, could 
foretell the inscription. lie himself did 
not pretend to pierce the veil of the future. 
He only knew the magnitude of his task, 
and that he was not dismayed. 



THE END 



S87 



UBRARVOFCONOKtSS 




003 789 281 6 ^ 



